E-grāmata: Creativity, Culture and Commerce: Producing Australian Children's Television with Public Value

Australian children, like UK and US children, have always been considered a special television audience while Australian children’s television, from Skippy (1968-69) to H20: Just Add Water (2006-08), has been some of the most successful children’s television ever produced. Since the late 1970s, state support for high quality, culturally specific television for this special audience has nurtured a creative and resilient children’s television production sector with a global reputation for excellence. This book provides a systematic analysis of the creative, economic, regulatory and technological factors that shape the production of contemporary Australian children’s television for digital regimes. It explains why Australian children’s drama n exports all over the world, while the circumstances of contemporary production have rendered children’s live action drama one of television’s most vulnerable genres.

Without a doubt the transition to digital regimes created new opportunities for children’s television, including dedicated children’s channels and multi-platform distribution. However the audience fragmentation associated with the expansion of the bandwidth eroded advertising revenue and program budgets during Australia’s digital transition. As the commercial networks reduced their investment in children’s television, the cultural integrity and hence the public value of much of the Australian children’s television produced with state support were gradually eroded. This book charts the complex new settlements in children’s television that developed from 2001-14 and describes the challenges inherent in producing culturally specific screen content for global markets. It also calls for new public debate around the provision of high quality screen content for the child audience, arguing that the creation of public value must sit at the centre of these discussions.