Seven West Media CEO James Warburton has warned the newly sworn-in Albanese government that making global streaming giants invest in local content will increase the price of producing Australian film and TV.
Warburton said at the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) lunch on Wednesday: “At Seven, we’re required to run 55 per cent Australian content between 6am and midnight. We don’t just accept this condition as part of our licence requirement, we celebrate it. In fact, it’s what makes us unique.”
“But we don’t need artificial competition introduced into content creation and that’s why I’m calling on our government to not introduce SVOD quotas because it will simply drive up price.”
The Labor government has yet to share its policy on content quotas for streaming services, but during the campaign season, Labor pledged its support to local TV and free sport.
See also: Labor pledges to support local TV and free sport ahead of the federal election
Anthony Albanese’s Labor government does not have a clear policy on whether or not to implement content quotas on the streaming services, heading into the election with clear promises to protect sport for free-to-air audiences and ensuring free TV services are easily accessible on connected televisions.
But he has vowed to review the anti-siphoning scheme to ensure Australians can watch events of national and cultural significance for free rather than behind the paywall of a multinational streaming service.
Albanese said: “Every Australian should get to see major sporting events. For a whole lot of Australians, free to air TV is essential to seeing those moments which lift us up as a nation, that inspire us, that help define who we are. Major sporting events should be on free to air TV.”
Prior to the election, the Liberal government had revealed its plans for streaming companies to submit an annual report to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) showing their spend on local content and the further action they were taking to encourage its prominence and visibility on their platform
The Seven CEO welcomed the pledged by prime minister and the minister for communications, Michelle Rowland, to review and update the anti-siphoning list and ensure sport is free for Australians to watch.
Warburton said: “There’s a loophole in the current list and currently there is nothing preventing the [sporting] codes from selling directly to streaming companies with the entire sport disappearing behind a paywall. Closing this loophole should be an important priority for the new government.”
The Seven CEO noted that it was a timely issue as Seven West Media is in talks with the AFL over the future of broadcasting rights deal with Seven and Foxtel set to expire at the end of 2023, with the AFL also opening discussion with Amazon Prime Video and Paramount+.
Warburton also challenged his TV peers to dump overnight OzTAM ratings and the way audiences should be measured.
The Seven West Media boss said: “For 22 years, the industry has owned and published the OzTAM ratings data daily. It’s been robust and world best practice. But, for 22 years, we’ve shown our decline year after year after year.
“Despite the changes to viewing and the inclusion of digital, as an industry we’ve been complacent and continued to do the same thing.”
“At Seven, we’ve been leading the charge on changing the way our audiences are measured and reported. The industry’s new measurement platform, called Virtual Oz or VOZ, will report true viewing numbers for our content from the start of calendar year 2023.”
The Seven CEO explained that when total TV is measured correctly on an overnight basis Seven reaches over 14 million people which then grows 21% four days later and 29% in 28 days.
“Now, given we trade and negotiate and post-analyse campaigns on a 28-day basis, that’s a 57% increase from overnight audience numbers.The challenge I put to my TV peers is, let’s get rid of overnights, even for just a month, and start to tell the real story. That’s what happens in the UK and the US where they focus on three days and seven days,” he added.
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Top image: James Warburton