SBS will be concerned with changes to TV funding: Cameron
Screen Australia’s Chief Operating Officer Fiona Cameron anticipated that SBS would be “quite concerned” by the agency’s proposal not to fund more than two series of the same television project, as well as foreign formats.
“This provision would not allow for Screen Australia to support the third series of, for example, East West 101. We’ve got some money on some of their productions which are foreign formats, including The Family and Who Do You Think You Are, and under this proposal, those would no longer attract SA funding. We don’t mean to pick on SBS at all, but it’s going to be controversial for them,” Cameron told Encore.
According to Cameron, “there’s been at times a lack of diversity” in terms of Australian drama, with many crime-based series being made in the country, and the federal agency funding multiple series of the same shows.
“That means that our money is locked into the same project when it should have gone into new things. Also, we’ve been funding foreign formats and that arguably locks out other Australian intellectual property, so broadly speaking, the diversity of the slate hasn’t been as good as it could have been,” said Cameron.
