Local film and TV content makes up just 1.6% of Netflix’s Australian catalogue
Digital access to local content, particularly on services like Netflix, has become a big issue for policymakers around the world. Here, Ramon Lobato and Alexa Scarlata assess how Australian content stacks up on services such as Neflix and Stan in this crossposting from The Conversation.
Over the last few years we have been studying the catalogues of Netflix and Stan to see how much local screen content each service carries and how this compares to international benchmarks.
Our first report in 2017 found that the Netflix Australia catalogue carried around 2-2.5% local content, much of it licensed from the ABC. Stan’s local content level was slightly higher, at 9.5%.
Our latest report finds that Netflix’s local content level has fallen to 1.6% (82 Australian titles out of 4,959). This is due to Netflix’s overall catalogue growth, rather than any significant decrease in the absolute number of Australian titles available. Stan’s local content level has risen to 11.1% (172 titles out of 1,548).
What’s in Netflix and Stan’s catalogues is a poor measure to compare to the FTA situation.
As I understand it, we have local content quotas to 1) maintain a sense of national identity and 2) prop-up the local content creation industry.
If Netflix and Stan’s algorithms greatly prioritise Australian content to Australian audiences, they could potentially have more Australians watching more Australian content than the FTAs do. If they don’t, they could have huge amounts of Australian content, yet it could all go unwatched.
A better comparison would be to look at the estimated ratings of Australian TV programs within Australia over time.
Pay TV, the FTA multichannels, YouTube, Facebook and the rest of the internet all have much lower proportions of Australian material than the regulated FTA channels. Linguistically, it is easy to see the increased use of American terms in Australian language over the last few years in particular.