Adult content could get two more hours of TV airtime during the day, prompting experts to warn the proposed changes do not consider the needs of Australian children.

Free TV Australia submitted a draft revision of the Australia’s Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice as part of the ongoing Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) review of the code.

One of the most notable changes in the draft revision is allowing commercial broadcasters to air M-rated content for an additional two hours during the day.

This content is not recommended for children under 15.

The current weekday daytime M-classification zone is noon to 3pm, but Free TV would have the starting time moved up to 10am on weekdays, weekends, and school holidays.

Social obligation

In response to the Free TV code review, ACMA raised concerns about the extension of alcohol advertising this change would permit as commercials for alcoholic drinks are allowed to be broadcast during M classification zones, with very limited exceptions.

Free TV’s proposal to extend the M-rated content broadcast time slots had “significant implications for whether we still consider free-to-air television as a space that welcomes and invites Australian children”, RMIT University lecturer in media and cinema studies Djoymi Baker told TND.

RMIT and Swinburne University researchers found most children watched screen content on streaming services on TV, with ABC the only free-to-air network in the top four most popular ‘channels’.

Baker said this did not diminish the social obligation to children, including “having sensible safeguards against unsuitable material”.

Family viewing

But Queensland University of Technology digital media and cultural studies professor Anna Potter said the proposed change would not be too detrimental given today’s children rarely watch broadcast commercial TV, other than with their family.

“It’s difficult for me to sympathise with commercial broadcasters, but in this case I do understand that that code hasn’t been changed for 10 years,” she said.

“And in the last 10 years [the whole context has changed completely] … children can access all kinds of content with minimal protections.

“So seeking to regulate free TV as if things were the same as they were 10 years ago doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Potter said rather than responding to audience demand, Free TV had likely made the proposal to give broadcasters more flexibility in their scheduling.

Bigger issues at play

The omnipresence of gambling ads were a much bigger problem than airing more mature content during the day, Potter said.

ABC Investigations found children aged between 10 and 17 watch TV in far greater numbers during evening prime time – when gambling ads are aired – compared to morning and afternoon time slots.

There have been persistent calls for a ban on gambling ads over recent years, with Australians losing billions annually.

But the government has been slow to act, and free-to-air broadcasters insist they need the revenue to survive.

Baker said there also needed to be more focus on producing children’s programs after mandatory quotas for networks to produce a certain amount of children’s content annually were scrapped in 2021.

As a result, 84 per cent less locally-made children’s TV content was screened on commercial broadcasters compared to 2019.

“All this talk of protection obscures the other concept that always characterised Australian policy for children, which was provision,” Potter said.

“We didn’t only try and protect kids, but we also tried to make sure that they had high-quality, age-specific content available to them on free-to-air TV.

“ABC is now the only game in town in terms of content for children, and the ABC operates without any content quotas either, so …we should be making sure that the ABC is adequately resourced to do that.”