School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemA Stream Come True? The Rise Of Online TV In Australia And Its Impact On Drama Production (2015-2020)( 2022)This thesis was concerned with the recent history of television drama production in Australia. From 2015-2020 an influx of new online TV services from both new, independent players and an ensuing focus by legacy providers on their own online platforms fundamentally disrupted broadcast and cable consumption and business models, such that television was increasingly online. Local television drama has traditionally been heavily regulated and subsidised by local government intervention but entering the market over the top of legislation that predated its existence, online TV threatened to disrupt its continued production. Given the scale of these industrial developments, I needed to consider two elements to conduct this analysis. First, what television ultimately was in Australia by the end of this period – how the local television ecology embraced online TV – and then what was made and how – the effect online TV had on the production of local television drama. Part A first considered the rapid uptake of subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) platforms – how these led audiences online with gusto. I catalogued Australia’s anticipation and informal engagement with these, the early causalities, niche players, and recent conglomerate entrants in the sector, before tracking the development, branding, and growth of local market leaders Stan and Netflix. There are now myriad SVOD services operating in Australia, but 2015-2020 was also riddled with experiments, failures, protraction, and disruption. The next two chapters assessed how television natives in Australia tried to follow audiences online with varying levels of success. Commercial incumbents followed audiences online with their respective broadcaster video-on-demand (BVOD) services. While launched somewhat begrudgingly, these have become integral to the brand identity and accessibility of these legacy players, as well as to the measurement of their ratings success and advertising value. Given their largely non-commercial remit and different metrics of success, Australia’s public service broadcasters (PSBs) have been able to embrace online TV, reframing their operations as multiplatform entities by trying to afford broadcast television an ‘equal digital life’ (Guthrie as cited by Hayes, 2016). Part B then looked to the impact that online TV has had on local drama production, a culturally significant but arguably endangered genre. I found that the formal arrival of online TV exacerbated decades-long decreases in its production. First, despite initial anticipation about a potential drama boom being precipitated by SVODs, growth was much slower and restrained than many expected or hoped. New original commissions by these services were limited up until 2020 and production strategies were restrained by the reach of the service. Commercial incumbents have met their content obligations in recent years, but they have by no means exceeded them. Australian audiences have been watching drama on free-to-air BVODs and so broadcasters have experimented with early online premieres and companion web series, but the prohibitive cost of producing drama has seen it maintain a secondary role to lucrative reality primetime programming. Investment in drama by the ABC and SBS also waned over the period considered, but release strategies and commissioning processes of the PSBs have shifted to respond to online logics. The remaining chapters reflected on some of the lessons and opportunities that can be gleaned from this recent history about the symbiotic relationship between old and new TV players. This thesis asked whether the rise of online TV has been a “stream come true” for Australian drama producers. It found that while online TV has provided rather limited support for the development of original Australian television drama, it has proven advantageous for the distribution of existing local drama and the likely future production of content with an increasingly global focus.