Write a letter to your representatives in Parliament about the importance of
Australian drama production by the ABC
Do they know that:
THE ABC WILL STOP PRODUCING AUSTRALIAN DRAMA if it does not get an increase in funding for 2006-09?
Local drama production by the ABC is at an all-time low?
In 2004–05 the ABC produced 20 hours of Australian drama, compared with 102 hours in 2001?
The cost of drama production is rising at a much higher rate than the current indexation of the ABC’s base funding?
That the ABC’s Managing Director, Russell Balding, told a Senate Estimates Hearing in May 2005 that “it is not about not wanting to do more drama: it is about not being sufficiently funded to enable us to actually do more drama”?
Senator Helen Coonan, the Minister for Communications, said that the production of local drama “is part of what the ABC should be doing; it is part of its charter to do that”?
That an hour of local drama production costs the ABC anywhere from $50,000 to $2 million?
That it costs from 10 to 50 times more to produce one hour of local drama than to produce an entire series like ‘Spicks and Specks’?
AUSTRALIAN DRAMA EXPRESSES OUR AUSTRALIAN IDENTITY?
Brides of Christ, Blue Murder, Certain Women, The Leaving of Liverpool were ABC productions?
Seachange, Wildside, Children’s Hospital are more recent examples of Australian drama produced by the ABC?
The ABC’s problems in funding local drama production has affected the whole independent production sector because of its heavy reliance on projects outsourced by the ABC?
THE GOVERNMENT KNOCKED BACK THE ABC’S FUNDING REQUESTS?
In 2003—the last triennial funding round—the ABC asked for $67m to set up an industry production fund?
The Government knocked back the ABC’s proposal designed “to nurture this pool of creative Australian talent through the establishment of a separate commissioning body, called ABC Independent, which will invest funds solely with the Australian independent production sector via co-productions with the ABC. In doing so, it will generate an additional 180 hours of high quality, first-run Australian content over the coming triennium”?
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