We acknowledge and respect the Traditional Owners of lands across Australia, their Elders, Ancestors, cultures and heritage, and recognise the continuing sovereignties of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nations.

We respectfully acknowledge the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation, who are the Traditional Owners of the land on which the ACTF is based and pay our respect to their Elders past and present.

We are honoured to have the opportunity to learn from the oldest cultural storytellers in the world and seek to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practitioners to share their rich culture and perspectives with children in Australia and around the world via stories on screen.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this website may contain images, voices or names of deceased persons in photographs, film, audio recordings or text.

Aussie Kids and TV: Tuning in Across Multiple Platforms

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has released new research examining the viewing habits of Australian children in a multiplatform environment.

The research offers much needed context and evidence to the current review of Australian and children’s content.

We sometimes hear people say that “TV is dead” and “kids aren’t watching kids shows anymore” and “they’re all watching viewer generated content on YouTube.”

The ACMA research demonstrates that these comments are simply not true.

Like all of us, children are certainly watching content on a variety of different devices – televisions, tablets, computers and phones. Time spent watching television since 2005 has decreased by 30 minutes a day, but the time that children spending watching children’s programs has actually increased. Children are viewing an average of 10.6 hours a week of screen content, of which 6.7 hours a week is children’s content. (If the amount of time spent watching screen content seems like a lot to you, consider how much screen content adults watch!)

The survey results implied that children watch programs for general viewing (like Masterchef or The Voice) with their families, but perhaps watch children’s content alone.

And while children do watch a lot of content on YouTube (the survey results do not drill down into what they are actually watching on YouTube), they actually spend more time on the combined platforms of free to air television, SVOD services like Netflix and catch up services like iView. This tells us that they watch viewer generated content in addition to rather than instead of long or short form professionally produced content.

ABC2 remains the most popular children’s channel.

The research can be found here.