Updating broadcast policy

Australian television looks much different today than when key policy for the sector was written.

Commercial broadcasters aired more than 500 hours of original Australian drama each year in the late 1990s when viewers around the country gathered to watch Blue Heelers, the funeral of Princess Diana and Hey Hey It’s Saturday ended after 28 years on air.

Last year, the commercial broadcasters commissioned only nine hours of drama between them aside from Home and Away and Neighbours and the number of Australians who watched free-to-air television in the preceding seven days dropped below 50 percent (46 percent) for the first time ever.

Yet Australians remained glued to their screens, consuming about 44 hours of media and entertainment each week across different services.

Now much of the media attracting Australians’ attention prioritises global rather than local audiences at a time of rising misinformation and fracturing social cohesion.

And while the Australian government continues to spend more each year — $336.8 million on television drama subsidies in 2024 — a lot of those funds go to Hollywood studios and to support titles that require viewers to pay for different streaming services.

Few voters heading into this year’s election are likely to be even aware of any party’s policy in relation to broadcast and screen sectors, yet it is critical to what they’ll view and where the government spends their tax dollars.

A broken model

The media sector was essentially built around commercial broadcasters who, after failing to adapt to a changing market and different viewer expectations, are now dying and left with a broken business model. They have declining audiences and revenue as a result of competition for advertisers’ dollars from social media, search and YouTube.

Government media policy establishes rules for commercial broadcasters, such as minimum levels of Australian content, how much they should pay in licence fees and whether broadcasters can show gambling ads.

The ABC and SBS operate independently of these policy frameworks, bound instead by their own charters that do not include any formalised Australian content obligations. They rely substantially on government funding and are compelled by a mandate to serve Australians.

The government also sets supports, including tax rebates for television and movie production in Australia — commonly refunding 30 percent of budgets to producers.

New Initiatives

Voters should be looking for critical initiatives on broadcast and screen media issues:

• A plan for a post-commercial broadcast world in which surviving linear broadcasters still have obligations to Australians
• A plan to ensure ongoing creation and availability of some deeply Australian stories and their accessibility by Australians
• A reassessment of supports and governance for the ABC and SBS — not to eliminate or diminish them, but to recognise their expanded role since the loss of commercial broadcasters and many newspapers.

Successive governments have largely tried to solve problems with small fixes instead of the comprehensive overhaul of media policy that is needed.

The Rudd government’s Convergence Review 13 years ago attempted to update media policy settings in response to digital change but the incoming Coalition government shelved all the report’s recommendations in 2012.

There have been many government inquiries since, but little action.

A New Era

Commercial broadcasters were the foundation of Australia’s media sector but they are dying. Their businesses have collapsed, partly because of a changed market in which advertisers have other, better ways of reaching consumers.

But they have also failed to adapt to television’s changing conditions and viewer expectations.

In recent decades, government and policy makers have drastically reduced prosocial obligations on broadcasters required for their access to the public broadcasting spectrum.

Policy is needed to phase out many licenses and avoid stations being used as ideological outlets in ways that risk Australia’s democratic foundations. There are many lessons to be learned from the US media system’s failures and recent station purchases should raise alarm.

Commercial broadcasters were once a vital part of Australian culture and key investors in specialised news and current affairs programming that also commissioned hundreds of hours of wide-ranging drama for children and adults.

They no longer commission Australian children’s programming, commission very little drama and have scaled back the news and reach outside major cities.

They serve Australians poorly and the government needs a plan to take back licenses and allocate them in ways valuable to Australians.

A Sustainable Sector

Separate from broadcasting, Australia has a screen production sector that has long benefited from financial support rooted in cultural policy based on the principle that it is valuable for Australians to have access to stories about what it means to live in Australia.

The collapse of the commercial broadcasters and the now global operation of the sector means that most drama produced in Australia is now designed for transnational audiences.

The 2025 drama Apple Cider Vinegar is an example. Although Australian, it was produced by Netflix, targeted global audiences and is only available to those who pay for the streaming service.

Distinctly Australian stories — stories that reflect the particularity of Australian life — have grown uncommon and require policy and support to ensure they don’t disappear entirely.

Today’s situation is far different from the start of the industry when supports were needed to establish a market that could be self-sustaining.

Australians would benefit if policymakers stopped focusing on driving screen sector expansion and instead prioritised cultural value in Australian stories.

The ABC

Australia’s media landscape has obviously transformed since the ABC’s charter — its governing document — was written in 1983.

Depoliticised charter renewal is needed to reflect the far greater role the ABC and SBS play in providing society-forming media.

The BBC charter is renewed every 10 years. More than a decade ago it repositioned itself as public service media — to be distributed on a range of platforms — instead of public service broadcasting. Though it too has been subject to deep and sustained funding cuts since 2010.

The ABC would benefit from more guardrails to ensure its ongoing commitment to Australian children’s programming, documentary and drama.

As well as better protection from detractors with an agenda to diminish its trusted role and from the whims of changing governments.

This would enable the ABC to be more like Medicare: not a perfect system able to deliver precisely what every Australian wants, but a guarantee that all Australians can rely on it for basic informational and cultural needs.

The ABC shouldn’t be expected to please everyone all the time – that is a formula for bland, pointless programming. It should provide a strong alternative to the commercial options offered by influential global streamers and social media.

This article was written by Professor Anna Potter, an expert in Digital Media and Cultural Studies at QUT’s School of Communication and a chief investigator at the Digital Media Research Centre, and Professor Amanda D. Lotz is leader of the Transforming Media Industries and Cultures research programme in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology. The research referred to in this article was funded by the Australian Research Council. This article was originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.