Programmer Profile: Tim Brooke-Hunt

April 20, 2011 World Screen
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PREMIUM: Tim Brooke-Hunt, the executive head of children’s at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, talks to TV Kids about his strategy for programming across the main analogue station, ABC1, and two digital channels, ABC2 and ABC3.

WS: Tell us about the channel’s programming strategy across all media segments.
BROOKE-HUNT: At ABC Television in Australia, we program a total of 32 hours every day of children’s content across three channels. Those three channels are ABC1, our main analogue channel, and two digital channels, ABC2, which focuses on the preschool audience, and ABC3, which is a new channel that we launched in December 2009 for school-age kids. At the moment in Australia, digital is available in about 85 percent of homes. We don’t really know to what extent the remaining 15 percent are not heavily into children’s households. But, my guess is that probably about 90 percent of homes with kids would have access to digital one way or another and really in the longer-term, I think that we view these digital destinations as being where our children’s content will sit.
 
At the moment, we have approximately seven hours a day of children’s content on ABC1 analogue, but in May of 2011, we will be reducing that in order to expand the preschool hours on ABC2 digital to 13 hours a day, and at that point we will have 13 hours a day of preschool on ABC2, 15 hours a day of school-age on ABC3, and the balance will be on the analogue channel.
 
WS: How do you go about commissioning?
BROOKE-HUNT: ABC TV’s commissioning strategy is very much around commissioning from Australian producers. We only commission from Australian producers. Very often, in the case of animation and drama, those programs may be co-produced with partners from countries such as the U.K., Canada and others. But, at the end of the day, they have to qualify as Australian content, which means that a treaty really has to be in place if there is to be a co-production. Interestingly, this year we’ll be doing our first co-production with CCTV from China of a new show, which we’re quite excited about. But, broadly, the commissioning strategy is that it is our commissioned shows that give our channels their Australian voice. That, of course, together with our hosts and our hosted blocks throughout the day are what really gives the channels their heart and their distinctive voice.
 
In the school-age area, we’re commissioning at the moment quite a wide range of content, including a new documentary series and, of course, animation, live-action drama, but also we commission reality shows like Prank Patrol, which has been very successful for us and is based on the format created by Apartment 11 in Montreal. We have a broad range of commissions, including a daily news show and a current-affairs show, both of which are produced by ABC Television’s news division in Adelaide. So, it’s a broad range.
 
In preschool, we don’t commission quite as much as we do for school-age. That may reflect the fact that we think that Australian content is perhaps more relevant to the older kids, whereas the preschoolers just enjoy a good show and it also reflects the financial reality of that age group. But we look for distinctive content. Very often with shows such as Dance Academy, these are dramas, which are aimed fairly high up the age group because our audiences are aspirational and therefore we do try to find content that is not readily available for acquisition on the open market. There’s an awful lot of younger content available, so a lot of our commissioning has tended to be up the age group a bit.
 
WS: Where do you look when making acquisitions, and for what categories?
BROOKE-HUNT: In preschool we acquire, what I like to call ‘the best of the world.’ Meaning, the best that’s available in the world. This can be content from as far away as—we have a very successful Korean show called Pororo the Little Penguin. We have great content, of course, from preschool producers in the U.K. and elsewhere. Shows like In the Night Garden, Waybuloo, that sort of big runs of content have been very successful for us. But, really, we go to wherever we see the best content available. I think the difference between preschool and school-age acquisitions is that inevitably we’re more focused on animation for preschoolers, whereas the whole philosophy on our school-age channel, ABC3, is to offer a very wide range of genres of content and so we’re looking for documentary, reality and all different types of shows to augment what we have in the commissioned area.
 
WS: How have you been working to extend the linear experience to online?
BROOKE-HUNT: It’s very important for us. I think to indicate to you how important it is, we launched on January 2 of this year a new show called Octonauts and in the first month of that show being on air—it was on both ABC1 and ABC2—Octonauts not only engaged very successfully on air and went straight to the top two or three shows for both 0 to 4 and 5 to 12, but in the month of January we had nearly half a million views online, which for a country with a population of less than 25 million is pretty exceptional. I think that that is a great tribute to the show, but it also indicates how much our audience likes to engage online. [Our websites] are visited by kids primarily for two reasons: one is for catch-up video and the other is for games. I think that if we can find programs that are not only going to be strong on air, but that have good entertaining game-type online content that makes for a very strong combination.
 
WS: What is your sense of how far out of the recession the kids’ market is?
BROOKE-HUNT: I’ve been a broadcaster for three years, and prior to that, for 25 years, I was a producer. And, I think there’s no question that the financial crisis made it worse. It’s very much harder to finance shows these days, but I think the situation is improving. We at ABC Television try to help producers by offering presales when we feel confident of the show working for us and we certainly try as much as possible to assist Australian producers in the financing of their shows so that, for example, when we commission a show, we don’t just give a presale, we actually give advice and help to the Australian producer in finding the best distributor, in making presales, in raising investment funds generally. As a public broadcaster, we see that as very much a part of our responsibility. The fact of the matter is that very often the best shows will come from relatively inexperienced producers—they’re not always the big companies with a lot of experience or financing. The other reality is that there is a terrible shortage of really experienced executive producers, certainly in Australia, and therefore that is, I think, another justification for the help that we try to give to our producers in financing their shows.