The days of free access to a range of homegrown dramas and comedies seem well and truly over, as debate also rages over free access to major sports. But why has this happened to scripted series?

“The short answer is economics,” says Banks, whose credits include productions on both sides of the paywall, from Tangle (Foxtel) and Sisters (Ten) to Safe Home (SBS) and RFDS (Seven). “For the free-to-air networks, drama is expensive to make and increasingly hard to finance. And it doesn’t rate huge numbers. Drama has always been made because of quotas and also because it previously brought a lot of eyeballs to networks. But the conditions of drama have changed so much.

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“We’re in an environment of limited series that’s been created through streaming services and their desire to draw attention to themselves. The streamers are trying to grow in order to survive, so if they can use drama to draw an audience and subscriptions, that’s what they’ll do. There are many factors involved, but, ultimately, it’s always about economics: it comes down to where investment is considered valuable for the future of businesses.”

Banks’ views are supported by John Edwards, with whom she’s also worked on a number of productions, including Tangle, Party Tricks, Puberty Blues and Offspring. Edwards has a catalogue of credits to rival anyone in the country and his productions also extend across a range of outlets. They include The Secret Life of Us, Rush and Puberty Blues (Ten); Love My Way and Dangerous (Foxtel); Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo and The Beautiful Lie (ABC); and Romper Stomper and Bump (Stan). Set to screen later this year are his police thriller, Human Error (Nine), and the sports drama Plum (ABC).

“With some exceptions, the people who run free TV don’t want Australian drama,” he says. “Drama’s not what they do any more. The FTAs [free-to-air networks] don’t want it, the ABC does what it can afford, and SBS does what it can afford, and that’s a very limited amount.

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“In terms of the free-TV spectrum, Seven has traditionally had a strong base in drama. Home and Away continues to be very successful and Seven does as little in addition to that as possible. Ten has only had four shows go to three seasons this century [The Secret Life of Us, Offspring, Rush and Five Bedrooms], and they have Neighbours. It refuses to die, and that’s a good thing.

“Nine’s always been ambivalent about local drama. There was a period when they were successful with it, around the Water Rats time, then with Love Child and House Husbands they had a bit of a run with it. But subsequently, there’s nothing that’s even been a clear shot.”

Beyond the free-TV spectrum, Edwards says, “Foxtel makes drama because they have to”, adding, “I’ve had 16 successful shows, thank goodness, and of those, nine of them only happened because of quota.”

The quota system to which Banks and Edwards refer was introduced with the Broadcasting Services Act in 1992, under the Keating government, which specified a minimum number of hours of locally produced content, with sub-quotas applying to specific areas such as drama, documentary and children’s television. The Morrison government suspended those obligations in 2020 during the pandemic, amid the revenue downturn and industry shutdown.

The system was subsequently overhauled and from 2021 the regulations specified more broadly that 55 per cent Australian content had to be broadcast between 6am and midnight annually on primary channels, and 1460 hours on non-primary channels. Foxtel’s required spending on drama was reduced from 10 per cent of revenue to 5 per cent.

The streaming services have not been required to produce a specified amount of local content and have argued vigorously against the imposition of a quota. They maintain they will invest in the local industry without it being officially legislated.

The issue has been a contentious and hotly debated area for years and the rules that will regulate the industry are currently under consideration, as the Albanese government last year announced plans for a national cultural policy titled “Revive”.

But while the application of quotas, the level at which they should be enforced and the branches of the industry that they should apply to have been debated, a four-year study by Queensland University of Technology reveals a worrying slump.

‘The streamers are trying to grow in order to survive, so if they can use drama to draw an audience and subscriptions, that’s what they’ll do.’

Producer Imogen Banks

Released in May, Australian Television Drama’s Uncertain Future: How Cultural Policy is Failing Australians found that adult drama fell from 570 to 300 broadcast hours between 1999 and 2023, close to a 50 per cent drop. The report concluded: “Reducing commercial broadcaster obligations over recent decades has been disastrous for the Australian community in terms of their access to freely available Australian drama.”

As the industry awaits news of the revised regulations, the climate is one of uncertainty. With that in mind, Banks’ approach is philosophical and pragmatic: “A lot of the hits that surface, like Baby Reindeer, are called ‘surprise hits’,” she says. “And I think, it’s a really interesting piece of television; that’s why it’s a hit.

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“So it seems to me that the best thing that I can do is try to find collaborators and stories that feel fresh and relevant and interesting, that are illuminating some kind of truth. That’s what I loved about Fake as material: it felt to me like there was a kernel of something there that I hadn’t seen and hadn’t really understood before and that I wanted to explore.”

Fake premieres on Paramount+ on Thursday, July 4.

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