Anna Potter

GLOBALISATION FROM WITHIN? THE DE-NATIONALISING OF AUSTRALIAN FILM AND TELEVISION PRODUCTION

Saskia Sassen argues that globalisation is taking place deep inside countries and ‘institutional domains that have largely been constructed in national terms’. This type of globalisation is localised to ‘national’ and ‘subnational’ settings, but is reorienting them towards global agendas and systems. The result is an unremarked de-nationalising of national policy domains, processes, activities and instruments. In this article, we argue that these globalising and de-nationalising processes are radically reshaping contemporary Australian film and TV production, and the terms and policy settings under which it is developed and monetised.

It’s a small world after all: New media constellations and Disney’s rising star – the global success of High School Musical

The pan-platform distribution of children’s television has exacerbated the traditional ‘obligation or asset?’ dichotomy that has characterized the child audience in America, Australia and the UK. Current industrial constellations mean that a media conglomerate like the Disney Corporation can take advantage of a propitious ‘alignment of the planets’ of production, distribution and regulation to monetize programs through multiple windows. Disney can thus ensure cultural visibility and program profitability in a television landscape where fragmented audiences of all ages must be encouraged and enabled to consume the same product indefinitely. The made-for-TV movie High School Musical epitomizes Disney’s capacity to exploit the programs it both produces and distributes. Thus High School Musical’s global success can tell us a great deal about new settlements in children’s television.

H2O: Just Add Branding: Producing High-Quality Children's TV Drama for Multi-Channel Environments

This is a case study of the Australian company Jonathan M. Shiff Productions and its ‘tween’ program, action series H2O: Just Add Water. The program has sold in 150 countries including the United States, where it was ‘the first non-American live action to be bought by Nickelodeon in America’ and screens every Sunday night as family entertainment. It is also the highest rating childrens drama series on Nickelodeon UK. While Australias content regulations are important to its production, of critical importance is ZDF Enterprises, the commercial arm of one of Germanys two public service broadcasting channels, and worldwide distributor and production partner for all Jonathan M. Shiff productions. Case studies such as the following provide useful insights into the shape and operations of mediascapes elsewhere, and where our own media environment may be heading. They also offer a glimpse into the way the international market place is organising along forms of cooperation designed to facilitate global distribution of cultural content. A central proposition of this case study is that the structural conditions of multi-channel environments require certain adjustments in form, content and business modelling that have essentially coalesced around the operation of brand management.

You've been pranked: Reality TV, national identity and the privileged status of Australian children's drama

Australian children have always been considered a special television audience. In November 2009, Australias public service broadcaster the ABC launched Australias first dedicated free-to-air childrens channel. Within a year of its launch, ABC3s most popular program was a local version of the transnational reality format, Prank Patrol. The popularity of reality television with children challenges policy settings, including the Childrens Television Standards (CTS), that privilege drama in the expression of the goals of cultural nationalism. While public service broadcasting ideology is expressed and applied to Australian commercial free-to-air channels through the CTS, public service media compete with pay TV channels for the child audience using a range of genres. Thus contemporary Australian childrens television is characterised by an abundance of supply, pan-platform delivery and a policy regime that has remained largely unchanged since the late 1970s.

Funding Contemporary Children’s Television: How Digital Convergence Encourages Retro Reboots

ABSTRACT Contemporary children enjoy abundant supplies of television made especially for them, delivered across multiple platforms by a range of providers that includes public service broadcasters, pay-television services, and subscription video on demand services. Although digital regimes undermined longstanding funding models for children’s television and reduced the production of local content in the United Kingdom and Australia, the demands of new market entrant subscription video on demand services striving to establish themselves in global markets have increased the value of the intellectual property of children’s screen content. ITV Studios’ 2015 re-make of the 1960s Supermarionation series, Thunderbirds, is used here as a case study to illustrate how convergence has contributed to a culture of re-booting in children’s television, a genre for which consumer products have long been used to underpin program production costs. Importantly, the licence fees paid by subscription video on demand services—Netflix had a

Regulating contemporary children’s television: how digitisation is re-shaping compliance norms and production practices

5 billion programming budget in 2015—have begun to provide additional, significant sources of funding for production budgets, while also ensuring the rapid visibility of program brands in global television markets, particularly the United States. New means of multi-platform distribution also erode the centrality of traditional broadcasters to program commissioning and funding. While this shift in power relations between broadcasters and producers may be welcomed by the production sector, the increasing importance of global subscription video on-demand services in the funding of contemporary children’s television poses a threat to locally produced, culturally specific television for children.

Children’s television in transition: policies, platforms and production:

Since its inception, the relationship between television and the child audience has been the subject of public concern and regulatory attention. Little is known, however, about the recent impact of digitisation on the unfashionable but influential practice of television compliance, that is, the industry’s application of state regulations and broadcasters’ own editorial standards to children’s programmes. Drawing on extended interviews with broadcasters and producers, this article maps developing trends in UK and Australian compliance systems, focusing on their impact on the children’s television produced by public service broadcasters. It demonstrates that multi-platform delivery and dedicated children’s channels have caused a re-calibration of compliance standards, encouraging conservatism and risk aversion in programme production. Furthermore, as public service broadcasters abandon their efforts to attract teenage viewers, the live action drama series at which Australian producers have traditionally excelled are far less likely to be commissioned because their content and themes are considered unsuitable for young children.

Cultivating global celebrity: Bindi Irwin, FremantleMedia and the commodification of grief

While the internet has facilitated a proliferation in children’s media offerings and platforms, television remains the dominant medium in children’s lives. Broadcasters and subscription services both compete for their attention, as viewers and as potential consumers of merchandise. Within this transforming landscape, children’s television is now produced and distributed through complex processes for global and local markets. The arrival of SVOD services like Netflix and Amazon and a dedicated YouTube children’s app further complicated the global production ecology, increasing the transnational nature of children’s screen offerings. Locally produced children’s television content nonetheless retains its importance in policy circles, with its perceived contribution to national cultural representation often used to justify regulatory intervention and financial supports for the genre. This theme issue on children’s television in transition considers policy and production issues related to children’s television in a range of Australasian and international contexts. In doing so it confirms the importance of local content within an increasingly globalized children’s media sector.

Pukeko Pictures and the Kiwi DIY Spirit: Building Global Partnerships from the End of the World

ABSTRACT Bindi Irwin, daughter of the late Steve Irwin, the Australian conservationist and star of The Crocodile Hunter series, has been celebretised since birth. Now age 17, Irwin’s winning performance in the 2015 US Dancing With the Stars extended her public profile from children’s TV into a prime-time talent show with a global reach. This article considers the role played by mega-indie production company FremantleMedia in the globalisation of Irwin’s celebrity and her seamless transition from child to adult star. Analysis of Dancing With the Stars, however, reveals that Irwin’s role in constructing a narrative of grief is integral to the effective exploitation of the Irwin family brands, including Australia Zoo. It demonstrates also how the emotional labour performed by Irwin in Dancing With the Stars, alongside the physical labour required for competition-level dancing, was key to her success and, in turn, the amplification of her celebrity in global media markets.

Managing productive academia/industry relations: the interview as research method

Wellington, New Zealand is a major international screen production base for movies including Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. New Zealand production companies like Jackson’s Weta Group producing content for international markets benefit from local policy settings that support such productions. In 2008, a group of long-time Jackson collaborators including Richard Taylor established Pukeko Pictures. In a small country with a deregulated media system, no dedicated public service broadcaster, and minimal supports for children’s television, Pukeko is a successful, globally oriented producer of children’s content. This article examines the strategies that underpin Pukeko Pictures’ production portfolio, which includes the 2015 reboot Thunderbirds Are Go, and a preschool coproduction with China. The combination of dispersed production practices, local subsidies, and quality infrastructure contribute to Pukeko Pictures’ success. We suggest, however, that strategic international relationships managed by Taylor are also critical to Pukeko Pictures developing a significant foothold in transnational television services.