Matthew Deaner opens SCREEN FOREVER
Good afternoon all.
I also want to pay respects to the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation and their elders past and present
You have all travelled to be here – some close – some far to do business, to learn, to be inspired, to inspire others and to share, collaborate and advance. There is no-where else that you should be. The next 3 days are going to be incredible. This conference – this annual corrobboree - nurtures and revitalizes our industry uniting a broad array of desperate players flung across all parts of this wide brown land and increasingly the globe - to a central meeting place –completing an annual cycle of renewal and rejuvenation. It reforms and de-calcifies the old and introduces us to the new - breaking down the silos of age, genre, experience, creativity and business. Screen Forever helps get you ready for the world and helps bring the world to Australia.
So let’s quickly update ourselves on what’s happened since last year the good – the bad – the ugly.
The second wave of overseas streaming services - including Disney+, Quibi and Apple TV+ - set for imminent entry into our market will hasten audience behavioural shifts and quicken the competitive tensions between current services. The swathe that has cut through long held patterns of audience behaviour and the traditional controllers of taste and commissioning by SVOD services continues to upend everything. Without regulation of content on streaming services the bandwidth offered to the public will be locked up with vertical integration of the large studios into the emerging distribution pipes.
Commercial free to air broadcasting has experienced increasing audiences on their unregulated BVOD services but declining audiences on their regulated linear services and in response are decreasing investment, promotion and shelf space exposure to forms of content that are harder to monetise.
Children’s content is the standout here. Despite public disagreements there have been healthy discussions behind the scenes as to options to better design our current regulatory system to incentivise quality and promotion on commercial services so that children’s audiences can be better served. There are great opportunities for our children’s industry here.
The ABC re-energised with a new MD and Chair is warning about reductions in investments in content as it needs to find cuts to meet the current indexation freeze.
The traditional subscription television business model is under strain reflected in a decline of reported investments.
There are fewer feature films being produced in Australia than has occurred in a very long time.
The oligopsony structure of the Australian content market and the current pressure upon commissioners is amplifying pressure further down the supply chain so as to increase the disadvantages that Australian producers experience in unchecked deals to the benefit of either international competitors who operate in more favourable market conditions or those who commission content from producers.
Foreign production and its stimulus through changes to the location and PDV offsets has benefited parts of the sector but have increased pressure on domestic production in terms of access and costs associated with crews and facilities.
Overall the trend has been cuts to the stimulus that is used to attract international investment in our Australian content productions (ie public broadcasting and Screen Australia) but increases in stimulus to attract international investment in content conceived and driven from overseas.
As a side bar – I like a music analogy here – this is the equivalent of us spending increasing energy wooing Beyoncé to come to Australia with some great recording studios and sound engineers to help her create her latest album and then see her return back to the US to sell it.
And us failing to not even more aggressively ensure that Australian artists can do the same thing here with the benefit of being able to market and promote the finished albums ourselves.
SMEs have the most important role to play here to navigate the current opportunities.
You can’t be jobless if you’re not looking for work. Entrepreneurial screen business – the people in this room – creates their own jobs and jobs for our industry and the nation.
Australian SME’s building their own IP with the long tail benefits that this brings to business stability and labour investment - are the best placed to deliver the most efficient, nimble and creative return on any form of Government investment in our sector
We know from Deloitte’s work with us that relative to other Australian businesses, screen producers are much more likely to be exporting ie 43% of production business generate export revenue compared with only 7.6% of Australian businesses. 14% of our revenue comes from exports.
We stand primed ready to reverse a trend in the data that shows us that Australia is importing content at a greater rate than we are exporting, and our overall export figure is lower than things were 10 years ago.
There is a $1.5 billion trade deficit we are keen to see clawed back.
So how?
Most of our export dollars are being received by businesses operating in Sydney and Melbourne generating production activity of more than $25 million. However, 80% of screen businesses are micro businesses of less than 20 FTEs dotted around the country in all states and territories including regional centres. With the right strategies, a broader group of businesses stand to increase their export earnings.
And while we export to 225 territories, most of the export income in the sector is generated from the United Kingdom and the United States of America. There are extensive opportunities in other markets. Hence our current interest in the FTA with Europe and the opportunity for a co-production treaty.
So, on those two points we know we need to be building export capabilities for greater dollar return across a broader group of businesses. And we need a broader and better set of strategies for our businesses across a larger range of territories.
The UK – like many of our key trading partners has a co-ordinated strategy for ther industry’s international development.
Canada has one.
Australia doesn’t – yet… part of our challenge is the multiple governments, agencies and bodies that present our industry to the world when what we need a unified and singular industry centric approach focused on IP.
To help get things moving we have created our Screen Export Advisory Council which is focused on:
Increasing screen export revue;
Increasing the number of markets providing export revenue;
Increasing the number of co-production treaties and MOUs (Australia has only 12 compared to Canada’s 60);
Increasing the number of official and unofficial co-productions that are made; and
Growing the skills and capacity of the industry to better take advantage of export opportunities.
Given the power of our medium, our industry has a core role to play in protecting our nation’s interests. To unite and inform the nation and ensure people can see themselves reflected on screen and in their own lives. Our values and Australian culture are then able to be shared globally.
At our heart is storytelling, a necessary human experience. It is something that will survive through technological disruption, but we will need to get things right now to capture the extensive export opportunities on our door and to ensure our storytellers keep telling stories for future generations.
