Beyond Bluey: the future of Australian children’s TV depends on ‘smart’ TV policy

Australian children’s TV has long been a jewel in the crown of the local sector. In the 1990s, Round the Twist was a ratings hit among children not just in Australia but in Scandinavia, Germany, Canada, France and the UK, where it even outperformed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

This international success continues in the 2020s. In 2022, Bluey ranked in the top 10 programs streamed in the US, and the eponymous blue heeler was featured at one of the country’s premiere festive events, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, as a 51-foot-tall balloon. Bluey’s towering presence over the streets of New York was a testament to the show’s overseas cultural impact, which is predicted to outstrip Crocodile Dundee’s. 

Due to this strong global reputation, concerns about the future of Australian children’s TV have attracted global attention, including from the likes of The New York Times. How could a home-grown creative force that punches so far above its weight internationally be under threat?

Industry transformation and policy inaction

Local kids’ TV is currently weathering a perfect storm of fluctuating industry and policy dynamics as the sector recalibrates to the rise of US-based streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney+ (the latter of which, ironically, is the platform on which Bluey found much of its international success).

Since Netflix’s Australian launch in 2015, there have been multiple government reviews around the issue: back in 2017, the then-Liberal government identified “securing children’s content” in the streaming era as one of three key media policy priorities.

Since this review, the only major policy change has been the removal of quotas for local children’s content on commercial TV. As a result, there are currently no concrete requirements for any TV broadcasters or streaming video services to invest in or screen Australian children’s TV. Predictably, in 2021-2022, the total hours of Australian children’s content dropped 32% below the five-year average.

In Labor’s new national cultural policy released in January, children’s content is identified as “at serious risk”. This language, along with the government’s commitment to require streaming services to invest in local content, is promising.

However, meaningful policy reform means not only supporting the production of local children’s TV, but also accounting for how this content is distributed, accessed and watched in the streaming era.

How do children watch TV?

Children’s viewing habits have fundamentally shifted, and Australia’s policy framework has not kept pace. Most kids now watch “on-demand” via streaming rather than according to a broadcast TV schedule. The deeper implications of this shift have not yet been grappled with on a cultural, policy or industrial level.

TV scheduling was long a cornerstone of the legislative approach around children’s content, working hand in hand with local content quotas and the content classification system. This combination scaffolded the provision of Australian children’s content at certain times of day. Free-to-air TV was designed to synchronise with the ebbs and flows of everyday family life — the rhythms of preschool, school and bedtime schedules — to make it easier for parents and caregivers to facilitate kids’ access to age-appropriate and local content.

By contrast, research by the Australian Children’s Television Cultures (ACTC), of which I’m a chief investigator, shows that most children now choose their own content from extensive streaming platform catalogues. The display of ratings and divisions between child and adult content are managed in vastly different ways across these platforms. The labelling and organisation of local versus international content also differ widely and wildly.

A research study I led with our ACTC team in partnership with the Australian Children’s Television Foundation investigated how children aged seven to nine use streaming platforms. When observing children’s content selections across all the major streaming services available in Australia (including popular BVODs like ABC iview), only 15% selected Australian content as their first choice. Yet in interviews, children often explained they would like to watch more Australian content but weren’t sure how to find it.

Unless the tile image on the streaming interface displayed clear signifiers of what children often called “the Australian Outback” such as Uluru or kangaroos, they struggled to pinpoint which shows were Australian. They were also often confused about the cultural identity of their favourite shows, suggesting that a generation of children raised on streaming platforms may not be able to distinguish Australian from non-Australian content.

So, how do we design policy that provides a solid foundation not just to support the production of children’s TV, but children’s ability to find and identify this content?

Regulation, streaming and smart TV devices

An ongoing government consultation into smart TV devices — investigating the policy around the display of streaming apps on internet-connected “smart” TVs in Australia — might hold the key. For instance, should regulation dictate that smart TV manufacturers make local streaming apps available on their interfaces by default? Going further, should such a policy also ensure that Australian streaming platforms are easy to find on the home screens of smart TVs?

Our research with parents and children found that even though most children now stream on-demand — and tend to be the drivers of their own content choices — they still mainly watch TV shows and overwhelmingly on a TV device. Smart TV interfaces are thus critical to the provision of easily accessible local children’s content.

In its submission to the smart TV consultation, the Australian Children’s Television Foundation suggests that a dedicated local kids’ TV app is called for, connected to a button on smart TV remotes.

Keeping Australian children’s TV alive in the age of streaming means more than just supporting its production. We also need to think carefully about how to make local kid’s content discoverable for its target audience.

This necessitates creative policy design as we move beyond a regulatory system tied to the outmoded broadcast schedule to one that accounts for children’s on-demand viewing practices in the streaming era.

Have you noticed a decline in Australian kids’ TV? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.