Could Australian TV be produced out of the defence budget?
I fully appreciate that this all reads as bonkers and that I really should be opening the newsletter with the phrase “I’m not a crackpot, but…”
We need to seriously rethink how and why we (Australia) are producing our TV shows. The world is changing extremely quickly with Trump now in the White House. Structures, beliefs, and systems of power that we all grew up being able to rely on have crumbled in just a few months.
We all need to reorient our thinking just as quickly and put in measures to support ourselves going forward.
A few weeks ago in the newsletter I posted a missive about the idea that Australia needs to be investing more in its local screen industry to export our culture and way of life in a soft power push to strengthen Australia’s role on the global stage.
My thinking was/is that maybe instead of wanting the US-owned Netflix to tell our stories, we should be thinking about how we can weaponize our content to our benefit - is it entirely a silly idea to think that Australian scripted TV shows could be financially supported by the budget of the Australian Defence Force (and managed by expanding the existing international soft power media effort ABC Australia)? Yeah, I know - wild idea, but we live in wild times.
And just to save you looking it up, the annual ADF budget is A$55.7 billion, with $527.4 million expected to be spent next year on the Australian Submarine Agency alone. Spending a few hundred million on the creation of Australian dramas and comedies that can be exported globally to build and protect Australia’s stature in a potential vacuum left by waning US cultural influence… that seems like a good deal to me).
What I wrote at the start of the month:
The only reason the US has any goodwill left from a global perspective is 100-ish years of soft power enforced through its screen production. We love America because of I Love Lucy, The Jetsons, The Golden Girls, Charlie’s Angels, The Sopranos, Sex & The City, Friends, Baywatch, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Frasier, Cheers, and The Big Bang Theory.
If Trump in the last week has radically shifted the world order, outside of the US we need to consider that we are likely about to see a cultural vacuum too.
It’s time for Australia to stop thinking about Australian TV as just telling our stories for local audiences or as engines for the local screen industry and instead think about how Australian TV can play a role in whatever role the country wants to start playing on the global stage politically.
And…
We need to be ramping up investment in local productions that are telling our stories in an authentic way (with Australian creatives leading it in front of and behind the camera). But it goes beyond just making the shows. We need to think of our TV as a handshake with countries we do want to forge stronger ties with.
In the 2-3 weeks since I wrote that, my conviction on the topic has only increased as I watch the continued re-evaluation of attitudes towards the US from outside its borders.
It’s all good and well for Australian TV producers and other interested parties to argue that international streaming services should be forced to make Australian TV programming to make up for the shortfall in local production.
But, I continue to struggle with the idea that our screen culture should be shaped by international voices - especially when all of these companies we are talking about (Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Paramount, etc) are US owned and are therefore at the whims of the US government (which is proving to be an unreliable ally). Previously my concerns were more related just to issues of corporate globalism (my big concern being content produced without local specificity in order for it to travel easier globally), but with US media kowtowing to Trump in ways previously considered inconceivable (shuttering of DEI initiatives, settling easily-won civil suits, paying Trump family members to produce propaganda documentary profiles… there was even talk of a fishing program for Trump Jr), those of us outside the US need to be wary.
The US government under Trump is embracing an “America First” mentality - does that eventually lead to policies for American media companies to be restricted from showing America or its beliefs in a negative light?
It all sounds drastic and silly… but I’m not so sure anymore that it is.
Sentiment is shifting on the relationship many of us have with America as a military presence. Why aren’t we extending those same concerns to media control and ownership?
Here’s an interesting article from Australia’s ABC yesterday about a survey jointly run by the TV show Q+A with YouGov polling Australians on the topic of whether Australia needed more independence on security. Last year when the poll was conducted, 39% of Australians answered that we do. Now, reaching the first 100 days of the Trump presidency, that number has lifted to 66%.
Last week former UK politician turned pundit Rory Stewart made an appearance on The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart. The theme of the hour-long chat was the changing relationship Europe has with the US, with Trump now reshaping the country and its global political standing. He’s obviously not talking about TV here, but there’s a very clear analogy for what we are talking about with content quotas.
RORY STEWART: When I was chair of the Defence Select Committee in the UK Parliament, 2015, we were looking at basically options of shutting down most of the British defence manufacturing and just buying from the US because it was going to be cheaper and they produced at scale, and we were looking at closing down most of our navy and becoming a sort of marine corps attached to the US.
And we didn't do it in the end, partly because we were worried about employment in the UK and the navy put up a fight for its own institutions. But nobody then, nobody 10 years ago ever said, well, wait a second, are you not taking a big risk here? Because what happens if the US was no longer a reliable ally?
It was inconceivable. I mean, literally nobody in that room said, well, hold a second. You're going to put yourself completely dependent on buying US defence equipment. What happens if a president comes in who says he's going to switch off the software on the F-35s?
Or, you know, you're going to get rid of your aircraft carriers and your navy, and you're going to design yourself into a marine corps to deploy with the US?
What happens if the US is trying to take Greenland off you?
JON STEWART: That never came up before? That wasn't something that was going around the room?
RORY STEWART: I mean, it's maybe a silly point and obvious to listeners, but we had no doctrine.
When we went to military training or we looked at strategy, we had no doctrine for what to do if the US became an adversary. We literally don't have any plans for defending Greenland because it was inconceivable.
What sounded silly and inconceivable a decade ago now sounds silly and inconceivable for almost the entirely opposite reason.
News Desk
New David Conenberg film The Shrouds began as a TV series in development at Netflix. But then they weren’t so keen after his script for a second episode. Read: The Wrap
The Shuster estate lawsuit that sought to block the release of the upcoming Superman movie into foreign territories has been dismissed. Read: THR
I’m not sure who needs to know this, but three Doja Cat avatars will be available to purchase and inhabit in Meta Horizon Worlds. Read: UploadVR
Trailer Park
Sirens debuts May 22 on Netflix.
Worried about her sister's too-close relationship with her billionaire boss, a scrappy everywoman seeks answers at a lavish seaside estate. Stars: Meghann Fahy, Milly Alcock, and Julianne Moore.
Alien: Earth debuts mid-year on Hulu/Disney+.
Football Parents debuts on Netflix May 16.
When it comes to their children's amateur football careers, this group of parents has no shame, no chill - and a peculiar sense of team spirit.
That’s the newsletter for today.
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