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January 30, 2023 5:30 pm  #1


Shades Of CanCon: Australia To Impose Content Mandates On Streamers

Does this sound familiar: Australia has announced it will be forcing streaming services in that country to show at least 20% of Australian content on all the streaming services coming into the country. It means, like Canada, the U.S. companies will be forced to invest in local productions Down Under. 

How they'll react to this latest imposed quota by yet another foreign entity has yet to be seen. It's similar to a plan to force CanCon on the streaming services here, which has been met with mixed reactions.

Comments attached to the linked article are especially interesting, with many claiming to work on Australian productions and wondering if the government there realizes what it's getting into.

"As an Australian filmmaker working on US content primarily to me it seems like the death of Productions in Australia. Why would a streaming service give up 20% of its profits on an audience the 1/4 of the size of most US states. What am I missing? Or is it time to relocate?"

Another says:

"I’m wondering, 20% of what exactly? Of the $17 billion Netflix spends on all its content? Obviously not unless the Australian government has gone insane. Is it somehow keyed to the revenues they make in Australia? Then they could just raise prices in Australia to cover this new tax, which is what it really is."

It will be interesting to see if this causes as much controversy there as our quotas have here. Stay tuned, I suspect there's a lot more to come on this. 

Australia To Set Local Content Quotas On International Streamers