ADM+S researchers present evidence at Senate Committee hearing into Media Reform Bill
Author Natalie Campbell
Date 5 March 2024
On 23 February 2024 Assoc Prof Ramon Lobato, Dr Alexa Scarlata and Dr Jessica Balanzategui from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) at RMIT University presented evidence at the Senate Communications and Environment Committee hearing into the Media Reform Bill (Prominence and Anti-Siphoning) at Parliament House in Canberra.
In November 2023, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland introduced legislation that requires smart TV manufacturers to preinstall iView, SBS On Demand, 9Now, 7Plus and 10Play on all smart TVs sold in Australia.
“The government’s proposed smart TV law is a light-touch change that will support our local content and public-service broadcasting ecosystem without compromising the user experience,” said Prof Ramon Lobato.
Assoc Prof Lobato and Dr Scarlata were invited to the hearing to present findings from their research on smart TV users, while Dr Balanzategui shared evidence on child audiences from her Australian Children’s Television Cultures project and study on Netflix and child/family audiences.
Assoc Prof Lobato and Dr Scarlata described findings from a nationally representative survey of over 1,000 Australian smart TV users which revealed that 33 per cent of users don’t know how to download apps on their smart TV, and 56 per cent of users don’t know how to change the order of apps on their TV.
Therefore, exposure to local content is heavily determined by manufacturers and their commercial partners.
“Since 2019, our research group at ADM+S, RMIT University has been studying local content prominence in smart TVs, to understand what smart TV’s mean for public policy, and to provide analysis and evidence to inform the regulatory options.
“Based on these findings, we support the bill, because it will rebalance what has become a structurally unequal marketplace,” said Assoc Prof Lobato.
Similarly, Dr Balanzategui’s evidence described that while children enjoy Australian content, they struggle to find and identify it on streaming platforms and smart TVs. Citing her research findings, only 16.7 per cent of children in her study selected Australian content as a first choice when observed using streaming platforms.
This research shows that discoverability of local and age-appropriate content is a challenge for Australian children and their families which could be alleviated by the requirements introduced in the Prominence and Anti-siphoning Bill.
Assoc Prof Lobato said, “we appreciated the opportunity to share our findings on smart TV user behaviour with the Senate Committee and to participate in what were often detailed policy and technical discussions between the Senators, TV network heads, streaming services, and consumer electronics manufacturers.”
The meeting was chaired by Senator Karen Grogran, and attended by Senators Catryna Bilyk, Ross Cadell, Hollie Hughes and David Pocock. Amongst the expert witnesses were heads of all Australian free-to-air networks, as well as representatives from Netflix and Foxtel.