Seven, Nine, Ten – Which is the biggest supporter of Australian-made TV?
On Friday, the ACMA released its report card for the three commercial free-to-air TV stations, and all three passed with flying colours.
Now, if you’ve been reading the newspapers, listening to Paul Barry, or watching Four Corners of late, you may be shocked by this result. But this has nothing to do with institutional misbehaviour, NDAs, or bad actors – although we do discuss Neighbours – but is solely about whether Australian TV supports local content – and it turns out, it does.
Yay!
Of course, this isn’t due to some benevolent belief in the power of propping up the local industry, or even to do with the crass double of ratings and profits – although these are clear considerations – but because of the Australian content compliance requirements that bind these stations.
Under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, each year, commercial television licensees must broadcast at least 55% Australian content between 6am and midnight on their primary channel (Seven/Nine/Ten) as well as 1,460 hours of Australian content in the same timeframe on non-primary channels (7Mate, and that).
So, who fared the best? At the risk of sounding like a political operative – it depends how you spin it, son.
At its most simple, Nine played 78% of Aussie content, Seven played 76%, and Ten 70%. All three are well above the required 55%.
This is across its metro stations – regional licensees, including those from the WIN Network, SCA TV and Imparja, landed between 70% to 79% on their primary channels. Also well above.
However, Seven was the only network that increased its percentages from 2022, albeit slightly – when Nine’s percentage was 79.47%, Seven’s was 75.88%, and Ten was 70.54%.
In regards to meeting the hours required on its non-primary channels, Seven clocked an average of 5,426.54 hours of Australian content across each of its channels during 2023, trumping Nine’s 2,625.78 hours, and Ten’s 2,018.15 hours.
Once you remove the 1,500+ hours of Aussie sport on each of Seven’s secondary channels, however, things get a little more even in this regard. Seven are still streets ahead, though.
These requirements aren’t the only local quotas the commercial stations must meet.
The Australian Content and Children’s Television Standards 2020 act, which I’ll call the ACCTS from here on in, requires commercial TV licensees to broadcast at least 250 points of first-release Australian programs each calendar year. This is first-run shows (no The Sullivans re-runs), and is usually content the network has commissioned itself.
These include commissioned, first release Australian documentary, drama, or children’s programs – or acquired first-release movies, with an Australian program classified as “one that is produced under the creative control of Australians. This may include having Australian producers, directors, writers and cast”.
Commissioned programs “may include in-house productions or domestic co-productions with national broadcasters, streaming video services or subscription broadcast channels”.
As for the point system, these are rewarded based on production budgets or license fees. Basically, the more a production costs, the more points per hour of broadcast it is worth.
Here’s a fun graph, explaining how it’s all broken down.
So, who fared the best? At the risk of sounding like a public relations expert – it depends how you spin it, sister.
In 2023, Ten broadcast 384.5 points of first-release Australian content, Seven reached 331.5 points, and Nine broadcast just 243.75 points’ worth.
It’s worth noting that Nine actually missed the quota this year, but “licensees may ‘carry over’ up to 50 points achieved in excess of the annual points quota from one calendar year to the next calendar year” – which they have done. So, they met the quota, but kinda cheated. So, see me after class.
Hang on, though. When it comes to the average hours broadcast across 2023, suddenly Nine are leading the pack with 176.25 hours of first-run Aussie content, Seven ran 166.5 hours, and Ten just 117.5 hours. The reverse order.
So, while Ten is dragging behind both Seven and Nine when it comes to airing Australian content — both first-run or otherwise — when it comes to commissioning or licensing Australian content, they are well ahead of the curve.
Put bluntly, Ten produced a higher quality of Australian television then Nine or Seven – at least according to the rules as set out by the ACCTS in the above grid.
Aussie dramas such as Riptide and series three of My Life Is Murder both scored 5 points an hour in regard to their production cost – for the ten-episode My Life, this adds 50 points – a fifth of the quota, for one production, alone.
Six-part series like The Secrets She Keeps and North Side were worth the maximum 7 points an hour, accounting for 84 points between the two dramas, while one-pointer doco series like Bondi Rescue, Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly, and The Hunt for the Family Court Killer kept the tally ticking over.
And of course, we have Neighbours, a solid 1.5 point program that racked up 45 points for Ten.
Pictured: 1.5 points worth of drama
There were some canny moves, too: NCIS: Sydney was produced for the Paramount+ streaming service, but by airing the pilot episode first on Ten, this added 7 points to Ten’s ledger, and acted as a gateway into the series and therefore a Paramount+ subscription.
Nine commissioned or licensed the largest number of Australian productions during FY24, but went for cheap and cheerful local productions – perhaps clawing back some of the money spent at the lavish upfront announcing said programs – or by licensing Australian films produced (paid for) elsewhere.
Of the 34 Australian first-run programs or films aired on Nine, 28 of these were 1-point productions — remember, Neighbours is a 1.5 pointer, and I’m pretty sure that outdoor Lassiter’s scenes are lit by Dolphin torches sometimes. In fact, the only production to get above a 2-point score was the two-part, three-hour spectacle Warnie – worth 7 points an hour. I guess unrealistic wigs are expensive these days.
Now, to Seven. They have their 1.5 points of Home and Away locked in for a whopping 172.5 points across the year – with their highest-budget programs being series 2 of RFDS, which is a seven-pointer, as was The Claremont Murders true crime series. Between those two, they accounted for 84 hours, meaning they can just stick a Go Pro on Dr. Harry and send a cameraman down to film at Border Security and make up the rest that way. Which they did.
As the above may illustrate, local content quotas are the main reason – gripping surf rescues and canine dream sequences aside – why Home and Away and Neighbours have aired steadily and daily across five successive decades.
Of course, the impact is larger than mere box ticking, but it’s the need for box ticking that has allowed for this impact. Think of the training grounds that these two shows alone have provided for thousands of Australian actors, not to mention the crew work and experience it’s given to a plethora of people on the production side. Writers, camera-operators, show-runners, Daddo brothers. Chris Hemsworth and Margot Robbie made their bones by learning, emoting, shooting, and discarding pages of script each week, for years. Those are some serious reps. Producing and starring in the highest-grossing film in Hollywood history is a cakewalk when you’ve routinely done hours of one-take breakup scenes on a freezing Melbourne cul de sac before breakfast.
Now, imagine how we could transform the Australian music industry simply by enforcing these higher quotas on Australian commercial radio.
Look at the confusing way in which Australian radio quotas are currently laid out, and the paltry amounts of Australian music required.
Where on that confusing graph does smoothFM sit?
Is it Nostalgia, meaning it only has to play 5% of Australian music (Flame Trees a few times a week should do it), or Hits and Memories? – in which case they’d need to add When The War Is Over and Choir Girl, too? Oldies? Easy Listening? Easy Gold? What the hell is all this? It seems designed to allow for technicalities if need be.
Either way, the numbers are too low. Hike this to 55%, and we’ll see a clear culture shift. Because, as the TV stations show – once you regulate them, they will start going above and beyond because — shock, horror — Australia is actually filled with great artists, and such an approach can be profitable.
Here’s another chart — most weekends should have a four-chart minimum, so I’ll stop with this one — which neatly illustrates how Australian content has crept up and up over the past decade, across all three free-to-air TV networks.
Imagine if commercial metro radio was playing between 69.6% and 76.4% Australian music.
Imagine how much exposure this would give to Australian artists, imagine how this exposure would impact the ARIA charts, how these chart numbers would give metrics — and comfort — to promoters looking to book live venues, or tours, or festivals, or to advertisers looking for songs for their new campaign.
Once you introduce the quotas, then it’s up to the radio stations to make it profitable. Which they will. Radio makes hits through repetition. Pink. Kings Of Leon. Wheatus. Three American acts that Americans don’t give a shit about, but who are inordinately massive in Australia because our FM stations latched to their music and played it ad nauseam.
Pink played 20 Australian stadium shows during her most recent tour, selling close to a million tickets. Imagine if an Australian artist got that level of Australian FM radio support.
It’s easy if you try. But quotas need to come first.
Enjoy your weekend.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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