8679.0 - Film, Television and Digital Games, Australia, 2011-12 Quality Declaration 
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 18/06/2013   
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MEDIA RELEASE
18 June 2013
Embargo: 11.30 am (Canberra time)
109/2013

News dominates TV while game developers go mobile

News and current affairs programs made up 36,500 hours of commercial TV programming last year, a new report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows.

"Nearly half the commercial TV content made in Australia during 2011-12 was news and current affairs programming," says William Milne, Director of Integrated Collections at the ABS, "that's out of the nearly 79,000 hours produced during the year."

"Perhaps not coincidentally, news and current affairs programming was also the cheapest programming to produce, with costs averaging about $14,000 per broadcast hour.

"That's considerably less than the production costs of drama, which was well over half a million dollars an hour.

The report also showed that income generated by film and video production businesses has increased, from approximately $1.6 billion in 2006-07, to $2.2 billion in 2011-12.

"The film and video post-production industry has fared worse, with the industry's total income dropping by one quarter, to $330 million," Mr Milne said.

"Nearly $93 million of this income was gained from visual effects work provided to other businesses, and nearly $66 million generated from animation services.

"The 136 feature films made in Australia during the year had a total cost of $540 million.

"The total income of digital game developers fell from $137 million down to $89 million.

"Even so, digital games developers produced 245 digital games in last year, with the majority - 188 of them - made for mobile or web platforms.

"Mobile and web games are the cheapest format to produce, averaging $74,000 per production, compared with $1.2 million for console games," he said.

For more details, see Film, Television and Digital Games, Australia, 2011-12 (cat. no. 8679.0).

Media note:

When reporting ABS data, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (or ABS) must be attributed as the source.