Child Audiences in the Digital Age: The Role of Australia’s Public Broadcasters

Abstract

This submission addresses the needs of child audiences within the transforming media landscape and argues for continued and expanded commitment to Australia’s public broadcasters. The ABC and SBS require charters, mission statements and sufficient resources to enable them to respond effectively to rapidly growing opportunities for, and obligations to, Australian children. My doctoral research profiling the children’s television industry in the analogue environment 1997-2002 and my current research into child audiences in the digital age finds children’s television a highly competitive business dependent on government regulatory mechanisms and support for its existence (Keys 2008; 2005, Buckingham 2000, Melody 1973). Without government requirements for yearly quota’s of quality, age-specific, Australian pre school and children’s programs; investment from the Film Finance Corporation (FFC) and now Screen Australia (SA); and without the continued contributions of the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF) and funding for ABC’s children’s programming, the industry would have great difficulty sustaining itself. As communications and broadcasting technologies converge, instruments of regulation - such as quotas designed around the characteristics of analogue systems of broadcasting - are being compromised. The ways in which children use television, and the ways in which the children’s television (CTV) producers create content, are also being transformed. This being the case strategies are needed to continue to ensure children’s television is strongly situated in the evolving digital environment.