How local producers fight the Netflix streaming tsunami

The local companies have been fighting the Netflix streaming onslaught by providing ‘local voices, local stories and local jobs’.

Joel Jackson and Phoebe Tonkin in SBS series Safe Harbour. Photo: Vince Valitutti

In early 2015, the press release announcing Netflix’s imminent launch in this country was surprisingly banal. It detailed, among other things, where customers could purchase Netflix gift cards — Woolworths, Coles, Big W or 7-Eleven — and touted original series Marco Polo and Sense8. They have since been cancelled.

But no one in the local television industry mistook the significance of this long expected announcement from the US streaming-video-on-demand company, and the ripple effects in terms of what and how content is produced in this country continue to be felt.

According to Roy Morgan, 10 million Australians have access to Netflix at home, an increase of 30 per cent in the past year. And now Netflix is about to up the ante again, with its first original Australian commission Tidelands debuting in December, and the rumoured debut of other tech-driven storytelling innovations.

So how are local companies fighting the streaming threat?

At the Westworld launch in May this year, Foxtel CEO Patrick Delaney declared “Foxtel is a streaming company”, and at the launch of the company’s upcoming drama slate in Sydney last week, he said: “Foxtel is unashamedly a premium product.” (In non-scripted entertainment, Mr Delaney recently told a conference in Melbourne that the company was preparing a “Netflix of sport” offering.)

Mr Delaney also announced the launch of the Fox Showcase channel, which has seen the consolidation of FX programming — and, previously, that of the Soho channel — into what was the HBO channel Showcase, to create a “super channel” of premium scripted content, with fewer re-runs being broadcast and a clearer destination for streaming via On Demand.

The company says it will have more hours of Australian drama this year than last, including Mr Inbetween and the upcoming series Fighting Season, with next year’s highlights including the return of Secret City: Under The Eagle (which streams internationally on Netflix) and the premiere of Lambs of God.

Chris Oliver-Taylor, chief executive of production company Fremantle Australia & New Zealand since last month, says streamers are at their best when they partner with local production houses and broadcasters. Fremantle produces the long-running prison drama Wentworth which screens locally on Foxtel, but which streams internationally on Netflix.

“What we want is brilliantly crafted stories that play well locally and then internationally on streaming-video-on-demand (SVOD). This will support a viable local market providing local voices, local stories and local jobs,” he says.

“I think there is a potential risk that the desire from audiences to watch their content on SVOD harms the local market to such an extent that we see a significant reduction in particular of drama commissions. I don’t want to see us beholden entirely to International SVODs, but do think they are a vital part of our commissioning landscape in 2018.”

By far the most enthusiastic participant in the Netflix co-productions has been ABC, with Glitch, The Letdown, New Legends of Monkey and the upcoming Pine Gap (premiering on Sunday). Netflix has completed only one other local co-production, the animated series BeatBugs with Seven.

David Anderson, the acting managing director of the ABC, told The Australian in his previous role as director of ­television that the implications of Netflix co-productions were something he thought about a lot. “People want more Australian content, and I think to have a Netflix or Amazon Prime Video or a YouTube coming in to partly fund something, as long as it’s still being made by Australians for Australians and produced by Australians and Australian companies, then broadly that’s positive,” he said.

“We have a number of co-pros with Netflix and some of those programs wouldn’t be made without that investment. Pine Gap, for example, is a high-budget drama made in South Australia and it wouldn’t be made unless Netflix money was coming in. It just simply wouldn’t be made.

“It’s safe to say (the ABC) will be paying less money than what it would normally for a drama like that. A lot less. But again, I do it knowingly and with some caution when we enter into those co-production deals.”

Marshall Heald, the director of TV and online content at SBS, says that the multicultural broadcaster has had great success with creating limited series for the Australian market and gaining international distribution with streamers. “To date we have been commissioning predominantly in the four x 1hr miniseries format. That’s a model that was traditionally a harder sell in terms of international distribution, but the market has certainly evolved,” he says.

“Last month Hulu launched SBS’s Safe Harbour to the US market. That’s a story only we would have commissioned; it’s quintessentially SBS and it’s resonating strongly with international audiences. The international demand for the type of Australian drama SBS commissions has never been so acute.”

Others are not so sanguine about dealing with the international streamers. “Netflix and Amazon love taking all the rights from producers. It leaves no potential earning down the track and we are reduced to ‘fee for service’,” says veteran producer Nick Murray from Cordell Jigsaw Zapruder.

“If they fund the show in the same way as a network would, they take everything. It’s become obvious that it’s the way the industry is heading, and it won’t be a viable business to be in.”

Murray is also under no illusions about the much-touted value of Netflix’s data and algorithms. “I don’t like to think of the audience as data and algorithms — it worries me. It can’t tell you what’s happening in someone’s house, or if Seinfeld is going to be a breakout hit, or generate any brand new ideas.”

CJZ’s creative director Michael Cordell, producer of Go Back to Where You Came From: Live which screened on SBS last week, says they have been focusing on the unique things local free-to-air broadcasters can do. “I think in this age of digital disruption, live television is one of the few things broadcast still has left up its sleeves, and it makes sense for them to exploit that,” he says, citing the success of American series Live PD: Police Patrol (which screens on Foxtel).

“We are already looking at other potential applications around live tech and live shows.”

Netflix’s first — and so far, only — local original series Tidelands, shot around Brisbane and North Stradbroke Island, is set to debut later this year.

But in a potentially more important event, reports surfaced last week that Netflix plans to launch its long-mooted interactive storytelling features this year with the upcoming fifth season of Black Mirror. Viewers will be able to “choose their own adventure”. But it appears few if any of Australia’s broadcasters and producers are enjoying a similar sense of control.