AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN'S

TELEVISION FOUNDATION (ACTF)

"The ACTF certainly supports Documentary Australia's aim to attract further funding to the Australian documentary industry and to invigorate the sector.

The ACTF would be willing to co-finance with private grant money on appropriate projects.

The ACTF has not contributed finance to a children's documentary project in the past, either with or without private grants.

It is sometimes approached by producers for support for documentary projects through its Independent Projects Investment Program. However, these projects are typically documentaries about children rather than for children, and therefore not within the scope of the ACTF's funding criteria. The ACTF only provides assistance for projects directly aimed at the child audience.

Unlike the adult market, there is little history of one-off documentaries being produced for children. The broadcasters prefer to feature magazine style programs such as Totally Wild or Creature Features as their factual programming for younger udiences. And like all children's programming, the commercial broadcasters rarely commission more content than they need to meet their local children's content quotas.

The ACTF would expect some form of market attachment.

However, depending on the project, this may not necessarily mean a free-to-air broadcaster. For example, if a project had an attachment such that the content may be delivered widely to the child audience, for example over the internet or another form of distribution to schools, this may be sufficient. The important thing is that any project in which the ACTF supports must be seen to be reaching the child audience.

The ACTF has its own distribution arm, which includes distribution into Australian schools. It often prefers to assist projects through distribution advances rather than production investment, as this provides it with a greater connection and involvement in the project. Accordingly, it is possible that ACTF assistance could actually be in the form of market attachment for a project.

The ACTF would need to approve the key terms of any market attachment and approve the marketing plan for the project.

Jenny Buckland, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Children's Television Foundation