“Not suitable for television”: how the ACTF’s faith in Round the Twist led to a successful global distribution business

This year, the ACTF is celebrating an exciting milestone – 40 years since the organisation’s inception.

During the first years of its existence, the ACTF had three titles to its name: Winners, Kaboodle and Touch the Sun. All were distributed internationally by three different entertainment companies, none of which exist now. Winners, the 8 x 48 minute anthology series, was underwritten by ITC Entertainment Inc, a British company which at that time was owned by Robert Holmes a Court. ITC sold the series to more than 70 countries. The animated anthology, Kaboodle, which came next, was distributed by another British distributor, Richard Price Television Associates (RPTA), and the 1988 feature-length anthology series Touch the Sun was distributed by French company, Revcom.

The ACTF may have continued along this path - finding a company to distribute each show as it came along – except that when it came to developing the first series of Round The Twist there wasn’t a distributor who would take it on. When the proposal for the series, derived from the weird and wonderful short stories by Paul Jennings, landed on the desks at Revcom, ITC, RPTA or anywhere else, the stories were deemed “too rude” or “not suitable for television”. Only the Head of Children’s Television at the BBC, Anna Home, was prepared to back the series with a letter of interest. The ACTF founding director, Patricia Edgar, who had brought Paul Jennings and Esben Storm together to create the series, was not going to let the lack of interest from international distributors stop the series being made. She was developing something magical with Paul and Esben, which was first and foremost intended for its Australian audience.

Armed with that letter from the BBC and a presale to Channel 7, the ACTF was able to finance the series without an international distributor through the Film Finance Corporation in the FFC’s first year of operation. But with no commercial entity prepared to go out and sell it, Round the Twist seemed destined to be aired only in Australia and the UK.

That was until an idea formed at the ACTF office, where Jenny Buckland had been employed as a lawyer. “As the young lawyer, all the quarterly distribution statements from ITC, Revcom and RPTA were coming across my desk,” Jenny says. “I used to notice that they were selling our shows to the exact same European broadcasters time and again, and they were charging as much as 40% as a commission. I would bring this up in staff meetings, because I found it interesting.

“Then one day Patricia asked me to stay back after a meeting and asked if I wanted to have a go at selling Round the Twist myself. I couldn’t believe it. So I went off to my first MIP-TV.

Jenny Buckland (right) with David Hendon from Luk, Spain at MIP-TV, 1998

“It felt a bit like we were making it up as we went along. But we knew we had a great show, and I had poured over all those royalty statements for the other shows trying to work out who we should meet, and it was thrilling. And really – who could resist Round the Twist?

“It didn’t all happen at once, though – some broadcasters were initially very reluctant to purchase the series – but it picked up momentum over the next few years, and we were slowly but surely adding a new title or two to the catalogue each year – so it grew from there.”

The ACTF has been involved in the development and production of some of Australia’s most renowned and popular children’s shows, including Lift Off!, Mortified, Dance Academy, Lockie Leonard, Little Lunch and Hardball. ACTF supported shows are well regarded across the world.

Roberta Di Vito and Tim Hegarty

International sales managers Tim Hegarty and Roberta Di Vito have been working together to distribute ACTF programs around the world for the past 20 years, and over that time they’ve seen many changes in the industry. “Once upon a time there were effectively three rights available – free to air TV, pay TV and home VHS/DVD,” says Roberta. “With the advent of online technology and the streamers that then followed, the rights landscape has changed monumentally. In addition to the original rights, we now have SVOD, AVOD, FVOD, TVOD, DTR, DTO, FAST, Catch-up… the list goes on!”

On the eve of returning to MIPCOM, the global market for entertainment, Tim reflects on how much the preparation for markets has changed over the years. “Long gone are the days when VHS tapes, and then later DVD discs, were shipped off in large quantities to Cannes in order to present our latest and back-catalogue shows to content buyers on enormous, cumbersome television sets,” Tim says. “Now program trailers are simply loaded onto our iPads and can be carried with us anywhere, any time from one meeting to the next.”

Tim Hegarty manning the ACTF stand at MIPCOM, 2008

It's a long time since then-ACTF lawyer Jenny Buckland flew to her first MIP-TV, armed with just one 13 x 24-minute episode series. Now, the ACTF boasts a catalogue of more than 400 hours of premium children’s content.

“Regardless of the means by which the content now gets to kids, at the heart of it, it’s still the stories that really matter,” says Tim. “Now more than ever it’s the diversity of the stories being told that create a sense of inclusion for kids around the world.”

You can read more about the history of the ACTF here.