The bosses of Australia's commercial free-to-air television networks have pleaded for an end to their obligation to make children's content, with one claiming they are "spending millions to make programs that are watched by thousands".
The chief executives of Seven, Nine and Ten appeared before a parliamentary inquiry into the sustainability of the film and television industry in Sydney on Thursday, where they put their usual competitive impulses aside to sing from the same song sheet.
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All identified the challenges posed to their businesses by international media giants, such as Google, Apple and Netflix, and all fretted over the shift away from the TV schedule in favour of on-demand viewing. SBS got a kicking, too, for forcing up the price of international content, with Nine's Hugh Marks revealing that the public broadcaster had outbid his network for The Handmaid's Tale.
But by far the topic on which they were most in agreement was the "need" to get rid of the requirement to produce at least 130 hours of first-release children's content, including an average of 32 hours drama, per year, per network.
![If the commercial networks had their way, all kids content would be on the ABC, home to this pair.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170722203236im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/f/e/a/k/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxfdsg.png/1500594551307.jpg)
"It's clear that children are not watching the C [children's] and P [pre-school] content that is designed for them on commercial television," said Seven's Tim Worner.
"We're spending millions of dollars on children's content for just a few thousand viewers. Some of the audiences are down to an average of 6000."
Children were increasingly finding content on platforms other than traditional television channels, he said. And when they did turn to the TV, it was rarely to the commercial networks.
"We have a public broadcaster with a whole channel devoted to children's content," he said, referring to ABC Kids. "It's going to be far more likely that Australian children are going to go there to find their content."
![Hi-5: Bailey, Courtney, Shay, Lachie and Joe.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170722203236im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/f/f/2/6/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxfdsg.png/1500594551307.jpg)
Ten's Paul Anderson urged the committee to recommend the government "abolish children's and pre-school quotas", which he described as "heavy and restrictive" and "no longer sustainable".
Asked what his network, which is currently in voluntary administration, would do with any money freed up by the removal of the children's content quota, Mr Anderson said, "we could reinvest it into prime time, into programming that would appeal to a broader audience, including [older] children". He cited MasterChef and The Bachelor – "which I watch with my 13-year-old daughter" – as examples.
![Seven's Beat Bugs marries the songs of the Beatles with computer-animated critters.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170722203236im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/5/u/u/7/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxfdsg.png/1500594551307.jpg)
Mr Marks told the inquiry he had brought Hi-5 to the network. He believed the children's entertainers could still have a case for being put to air as a new program in today's climate, but "because of fragmentation the audience would be a lot lower".
He cited the case of kids' science program Most Extreme Alien Planet Earth, which in one week had an average audience between 16,000 and 20,000 viewers a day.
![Totally Wild co-presenter Scott Bidmead.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170722203236im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/f/e/x/j/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxfdsg.png/1500594551307.jpg)
When asked if there was an opportunity to reach more young viewers via Stan, which Nine co-owns with Fairfax Media (publisher of this masthead), Mr Marks revealed that one episode of the same program had been watched by just nine people on the streaming platform.
The obligation to make children's content, he said, forced the networks to "waste valuable resources on unproductive outcomes. We are wasting our money, your money, taxpayers' money, making shows for an audience we can't reach. These valuable funds should be employed elsewhere to the benefit of the whole industry."
![Beat Bugs character Jay. Beat Bugs is an animated series aimed at five- to seven-year-olds, revolving around the lives ...](http://web.archive.org./web/20170722203236im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/a/f/2/2/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gxfdsg.png/1500594551307.jpg)
Screen Australia reports that last financial year 115 hours of children's drama were produced in Australia at a cost of $101 million (that figure includes content made for the ABC and others).
In its submission to the inquiry, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance noted "there appears little enthusiasm for Australian children's television" from the commercial broadcasters, whose attitude to children's content quotas was "bordering on resentment".
It noted that the challenges the networks faced were real, but argued "there is an unequivocal cultural dividend" to maintaining the quotas.
In its written submission to the inquiry, the Australian Children's Television Foundation has called for a new approach that would include making a commitment to children's content part of the ABC's charter.
It does not support removing quotas for the commercial networks, but does argue for a "new regulatory framework … that is platform agnostic, and which applies to all screen content providers", which would in practice include the likes of Netflix, Stan and pay TV.
The inquiry's next public hearing is scheduled for Melbourne on July 26.
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