The Sydney Morning Herald touches on the importance of Australian television to the building and maintenance of a national character.
The possible demise of free television because of its failure to modernise behind a wall of protection might be greeted with a regretful shrug of the shoulders, in much the same way as we regard the demise of textile manufacturing, except that while there's no obvious difference between a Chinese shirt and an Australian one, there is a big difference between American TV shows and Australian ones.
The advertising money that's channelled through the networks' programming departments into local drama helps form the national character, in which case Australia is becoming a cipher, a non-entity. According to Harold Mitchell, just 9 per cent of fiction programs on Australian TV in the past 12 months were locally produced. This compares with 86 per cent in the UK, 56 per cent in Germany, 47 per cent in Italy, 31 per cent in France and 21 per cent in Sweden.
To take an example in a slightly different area, I watch a lot of French films. That's not because French films are inherently good, but because they produce so many that some are bound to be the type that I like. In contrast, Australia currently creates so little television drama that it's not unexpected that there is nothing that I like.
The Evatt Foundation shows the great disparity in size with the USA, Australia's main source of entertainment.
Over the past 5 years Australia has produced on average 34 feature films per year worth about US$100 million, while in the same period the US has produced an average of 656 feature films per year worth about US$10.8 billion.
Australia has 28 commercial free-to-air television stations affiliated with 3 networks; 2 national public broadcasters; and 5 subscription TV operators offering up to 56 channels. In the US there are more than 1,500 TV stations, most of which are affiliated with 5 major networks, and 9,000 cable TV systems.
Finally, the Screen Producers Assocation of Australia has an article about the reduction in funding and drama output of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Of 17 OECD countries surveyed about levels of public broadcasting funding, Australia came in at 16th, behind countries including Belgium, Ireland and New Zealand.
I've previously noted the lack of funding for the ABC. That's just one component in the globalisation of entertainment which could lead to the situation of people going for overseas holidays and seeing the same old stuff on television everywhere they go.