‘I give us 10 years’: The alarming collapse of Australian children’s TV
Industry insiders feared what the removal of commercial quotas on children’s content in 2020 would mean for local content. Six years later, their worst fears seem to have been realised.
Nicholas Verso knows a thing or two about making children’s television. He’s won a Logie for his series Crazy Fun Park, and an Australian Directors’ Guild Award for his work on Grace Beside Me. More recently, Invisible Boys, though catering to a slightly older audience, made such waves at home and abroad that it earned a coveted Peabody nomination.
Yet, even with this impressive resume, Verso’s new ideas are falling on deaf ears.
“People don’t even want to hear the pitch,” he says. “The ABC is the only door you can really knock on … No other network or streamer is interested in [young] audiences. YA is a dirty word in Australian commissioning now.”
In 2020, the then-Coalition government removed commercial quotas on children’s content. New research suggests that triggered a 97 per cent collapse in the total investment in commercial kids’ television. While mega-popular shows like Bluey and Play School continue building their empires, the commissioning of new shows has largely fallen by the wayside.
“If we don’t fix this, I give our industry 10 years before we’re over,” Verso says.
It sounds dramatic, but he may not be far off. According to a new report by RMIT’s Streaming Industries and Genres Network, released as part of consultation for the National Cultural Policy, children’s television is currently in crisis.
According to Screen Australia, only five children’s shows went into production in 2024-25, down from 20 in 2018-19. Meanwhile, a historic low of 21 hours of new children’s drama entered production last year. Comparatively, 167 hours went into production in 2018-19.
Even at the national broadcaster, which has long been Australia’s primary children’s content commissioner, the output for kids is declining. Since 2018-19, the ABC has seen a 59 per cent decrease in new hours of Australian children’s content, according to the RMIT report.
In response, an ABC spokesperson says the broadcaster’s overall investment and expenditure in children’s content “has not declined, but rather our content slate has evolved towards externally produced content” since 2018-19. They claim the ABC’s overall investment in children’s screen programming increased by 9 per cent between 2018-19 and 2024-25.
“The ABC remains committed to increasing its spend on children’s programming year-on-year and to prioritising external productions.”
However, Dr Jessica Balanzategui, lead author of Australian Children’s Television at the Crossroads, says we’re seeing a “perfect storm of sector-wide contraction”.
“We have this paradox where we’re seeing the sector contract at this
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