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The information and links below provide an industrial overview of the place of Australian documentary in the screen economy. This page is part of Australian Documentary - a site dedicated to the study of Australian documentary production and the genre of documentary within an Australian framework.

Australian Documentary is part of the Culture and Communication Reading Room at Murdoch University.

During the 1980/81 financial year, which marked the beginning of the 10BA tax concession period for film and television production in Australia, total production expenditure was $60.33 million, of which 0.5% was spent on documentary productions, 96%, on features and 3.5% on telemovies and mini-series.

The peak of the 10BA period around 1984/85, saw funds secured for documentary production rise to 9.7% of the total gained through 10BA. Feature films took 36.3% of the total, with telemovies and mini-series up to 54%.

The actual dollar values of production budgets suggests that documentary production was low during the 10BA period. In part this is due to the differences in documentary and feature budgets, which makes it important to consider the actual number of projects financed during this period. From 1980 to 1993, of the total number of projects funded through Division 10BA, 55.7% were documentaries.

In 1986/87, documentaries took up 10.2% of prime time programming on ABC television, and an average of 4.5% of prime time on commercial television stations. In 1991, documentaries took up 14.8% of total programming time on the ABC and 2.6% of total programming time on the commercial stations.

Presale arrangements to television networks means that few documentaries have theatrical release. Returns are generally low on documentary productions which do get theatrical release.

Information presented at the third biennial Documentary Conference in Australia in 1993 suggested that rating results for documentaries screened on all commercial networks had come to "compare favourably" with other program categories. Despite this claim, documentary productions still receive comparatively low exposure on commercial television networks.

Australia is recognised internationally as a major supplier of documentary productions, with many productions receiving critical acclaim and awards at major festivals. During 1988 and 1993, the AFC tracked 266 overseas festivals which screened Australian documentaries and 280 which screened Austalian features.

In 1994, a survey of regularly watched film and television program catagories in Australia, found that documentary productions scored 41.2%, with news and current affairs highest at 80.8%.