Network Insight Institute

Andy McIntyre

Andy McIntyre, GM, Program Finance & Development, Network Ten

Rather than go through all of the elements of the individual submissions, I would like to concentrate on a couple of the key areas where we believe some fine tuning of the standard would not only assist Network Ten, but continue to promote some diversity in the programming on offer across the free-to-air commercial broadcasters. The last thing we would want is to see the standard operate as a 'cookie cutter', so that all of the programs end up looking the same. This is particularly the case with adult drama, where we feel that some re-weighting of the format factors would help to match the risks and rewards in a beneficial way, and see formats such as sitcom and sketch comedy return to our screens and hopefully a greater volume of bigger-budget telemovies and mini-series. We have been working with the FFC on this issue.

One reason for the disappearance of sitcom and sketch comedy from commercial free-to-air television is that the relative risks involved in the formats are too high in relation to the costs and the format factors that would be achieved. We believe that some adjustment to the format factors, together with recognition of sitcom pilots and allowing some shorter-form scripted drama elements within other programs, would be terrific stimulants to finding new and exciting comedy formats for free-to-air television. We don't think that this would be disadvantageous to anybody: it would be beneficial to the audience, the broadcasters and the producers who are more involved with comedy and light entertainment production than the traditional one-hour drama series format.

In addition, we believe that the introduction of a points differential for feature films where networks have made an equity contribution would promote a valuable additional source of finance in the feature film sector. The Ten Network has been involved with equity participation in a number of feature films this year. Our preference is to be involved with lower-budget comedies that would work well with our audience, but that is not the limit of our thinking. Many of you will be familiar with the Nine Network's aspirations to fund some new feature film projects through their current prospectus as well.

We don't believe that the introduction of some more ambitious format factors would result in any material impact on the number of drama hours broadcast. The current standard provides for a range of drama hours, depending on the formats that a network chooses to broadcast: you could have as few as 80 hours of drama a year or as many as 258 hours to achieve the minimum criteria under the standard. From a Ten Network perspective, we remain perplexed about the recent argument that changes to the format factors would result in a reduction in the number of hours. What we are looking to do is to skew our drama production towards that higher end: the more expensive series produced at the rate of 26 hours per year or less, the high-budget telemovies, the mini-series (Network Ten wants to see at least two mini-series a year back on our network) and feature films.

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