Netflix is opening its first Australian HQ. What does this mean for the local screen industry?
Netflix is opening an Australian headquarters this year. But just 1% of Netflix Australia’s catalogue is Australian content, explain Ramon Lobato and Stuart Cunningham in this crossposting from The Conversation. So will an Australian presence mean more local content?
Netflix officially entered the Australian market in 2015, and now reaches 50% of Australia’s adult population. Despite its remarkable success, Netflix has had no local office and a handful of local staff.
This looks likely to change when Netflix opens its Australian headquarters later in the year. The company has hired two senior Sydney-based staffers – a head of publicity for Netflix Originals in Australia/New Zealand, and a director of public policy – and is looking for office space to house what is expected to be a team of around 10 employees.
Charlotte Best in the Australian Netflix original drama Tidelands (2018). Research last year found that only around 1% of the Netflix Australia catalogue was Australian content. Hoodlum Entertainment
All this suggests Netflix may be inching closer to becoming a “local” media company, with an increased presence in our small but profitable national market. What might this mean for local screen producers?
Means local talent has more opportunity than ever before to get their ideas onto a global platform. Which is only a positive.
Means because of the above, local Networks have to start to broaden their content offering outside of cooking, dating and renovation shows to stay relevant. Which is only a positive.
Means we’re going to see some truly epic advertising campaigns from Australia bringing the above mentioned local talent to the world. Which is only a positive.
A brand that is one of the biggest drivers of pop culture today with deep deep pockets – Watch this space.
I hope you are right.
To date there is little evidence of that happening … yet.
If those parties don’t support local production companies to produce quality well-budgeted content then the local on-screen talent won’t get their opportunity, the fresh ideas won’t see the light-of-day and it will still be dating, cooking and building re-hashes, and the epic campaigns won’t come to fruition.
So … SHOW ME THE MONEY.
I wonder what the point of getting one’s ideas onto a global platform just to fulfill a local content requirement would be, the second it leaves Australia it becomes English (US) language foreign content which I assume they have plenty of already.
If I sound Cynical, perhaps I am, but I remember days and evenings in the early 1970s, sitting in coffee lounges with small groups of motivated artists, and cheaply rented venues with bigger groups, listening to union people, industry luminaries, men from the networks, etc, as we tried desperately to make a case for an increase in Australian content for television drama, and film.
There was, rhetoric, anger, heartfelt passion and even pleading, but it all faded into the tapestry of life. A points system emerged and a tax incentive, a wave of nationalism, a quantity of political bullshit that mutated into jingoism and outright lying, but the Australian content, which though it jumped up and down again from time to time, remained pretty much the same. The ills ( still very much with us) lay elsewhere, but I can’t even start that one on this page.