If anyone can pave the way for Netflix in Australia, it's Stuart Cunningham.
Australia's leading media industry academic is heading for the USA on a Fulbright Senior Scholarship to untangle its complex web of media ownership and distribution in the age of internet television.
QUT's Distinguished Professor Stuart Cunningham said internet behemoths like Google/Youtube, Amazon, Netflix and Apple were muscling in on Tinseltown's power structure.
"There's an unprecedented power shift happening in the US around which organisations control the distribution of entertainment products, and therefore much of the profit," the Creative Industries Faculty expert said.
"These new players now control the distribution of content on a raft of lucrative new online platforms.
"None of these new players is owned by Hollywood.
"Hollywood has tried in the past to be the master of online TV and it's failed. It's taken these IT companies - the born digitals - to crack the market because they intrinsically understand how to build businesses in the digital economy.
"This hothouse of change happening right now in the US entertainment industry has important implications for Australian policy, consumers and the Australian production industry."
Professor Cunningham said the power shift was creating an explosion of new supply chains, with online distribution giants like Netflix and Amazon creating and commissioning their own content in addition to distributing Hollywood's traditional film and television products, and YouTube providing a global platform for a 'distinctly new TV ecology'.
Feeding YouTube as a distribution platform are the exploding number of multi-channel networks (MCNs), the new aggregators that help content creators position themselves amongst the hundreds - even thousands - of new and rebranded TV, music and games channels.
In the first comprehensive study of its kind, Professor Cunningham's research will include the new distribution platforms' business models, the changing structure of the US entertainment industry, competition and regulatory issues, and labour issues such as how sustainable the new wave of content provision might be.
Professor Cunningham's project will be keenly watched by Australia's entertainment industry, as well as Australian consumers who want better access to platforms like Netflix and faster internet speeds.
"We're not really in a position to experience the new TV ecology as it's rapidly evolving because most of the big distribution players are here in only truncated form, or not at all," Professor Cunningham said.
"That's in part due to the so-called 'Australia tax' as well as territory-specific legacy deals done to prevent the importation of entertainment and software products across geographical regions, such as region-coding for DVDs.
"Where does all this leave us from an innovation point of view?
"The number of new participants, the professionalisation of amateur film makers, the commercialisation of content, the shift in advertising to online - this is all happening in the US and Australia needs to capture more of these opportunities for our industry.
"There is a wide range of very good digital video producers in Australia but they're not as well connected into this new TV ecology to the extent that they should be or could be - and this is something I'll be working to address."
One of the world's largest and most prestigious bi-national educational and cultural exchange programs, Fulbright-funded research is designed to foster cultural opportunities that benefit both Australia and the US.
Professor Cunningham will base his four-month Fulbright Scholarship at the University of California Santa Barbara, from November 2014.
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Media contact:
Kate Haggman, QUT Media, 07 3138 0358, kate.haggman@qut.edu.au.
After hours Rose Trapnell, QUT Media team leader, 0407 585 901.
