• Variety, Wednesday, November 15, 2006 11:45 AM

Australia's biggest media buyer, Harold Mitchell, wants the government to trim network TV license fees and provide financial inducements to produce more dramas. Only then will the fortunes of the country's ailing TV industry turn around, Mitchell says.

In the last five years, prime-time audiences have shrunk by 6%-16% in the under-40 crowd--while costs are increasing faster than revenues. "Unless we collectively act, commercial free-to-air television will lose more audience than it has already as a consequence of the emergence of new technologies," Mitchell says. He argues that Australian content is vital for maintaining network TV, but networks balk at the expense, especially for drama.

Locally produced programming attracts consistently bigger audiences than programs produced offshore, but the volume of drama is very low. "Only 9% of new fiction on Australian television ... was locally produced in 2005," he says. "By comparison, the figures for the U.S. were 94%; the U.K. 86%; and even the Netherlands, with a much smaller population than Australia, 17%."

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