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More audiences, sure, but where is the money?

At the Beyond the Box Office forum in Sydney Mark Gooder, CEO of Icon, questioned the financial value of television viewings of Australian films to the industry.

“You can get more audiences today, sure, but what can you get out of them financially? Television is the least contributing financial element of our industry model. What am I getting out of it? Not a lot,” he said.

The Beyond the Box Office study, released yesterday by Screen Australia, found that Australian cinema releases for 2007-2009 had achieved total audience viewings of 100.8m across cinema, DVD/Blu-ray, television and online distribution. It emphasises how screen content reporting is focused on revenue, not in the number of people viewing it, and how television delivers new audiences for Australian films – even those that ‘failed’ at the box office during their cinema run.

The report said that “below-average” grossing films perform “far better on television than their theatrical release would indicate”, and the bottom 80 performers had reached 10.48m viewings on their FTA screening, compared to 5.23m for the top 20 films.

Some producers present at the forum argued that while it was important that content reached an audience no matter what the medium, there is a distinction between ‘eyeballs’ (viewers) and value to the producer, particularly in terms of television screenings.

Universal McCann’s Mat Baxter added that “TV networks control the eyeballs, and they don’t pay anyone very much money” for content. According to Baxter, a digital model controlled by Apple and its iTunes would not be much better for content producers.

“The film industry had a five-year advantage over the music industry, but everybody sat down and did nothing. Now Apple is the online equivalent of the TV network ; they’ve got protection around them and that position of power and privilege is there to maximise returns. They can set the pricing and the percentages, and content on iTunes still expensive to the consumer… consumers for too long have felt they were paying too much [for content]. You might not like that, but it’s the reality of the situation,” said Baxter.

“The audience debate is going on everywhere, whether you’re marketing film or a product. If you produce something that’s brilliant, marketing it is not a problem. If you’ve got a shitty product, it’s bad news for you,” he added. “You should test, refine and listen to the audience rather than hoping you’ll have something people will fall in love with. But careful; if you look too much at statistics and models, you end up with ‘Frankenstein’ products.”

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