ABC seeks younger viewers

MIPDOC: Australian public broadcaster ABC aims to bring down the average age of the audience for its flagship channel ABC1 with more targeted commissions and acquisitions.

Alison Baker, senior acquisitions manager non-fiction at ABC, told C21 that the network is keen to attract a younger family audience to the channel.

She said: “Traditionally ABC1 is skewed older, mainly over-55s. We’re aiming for 35- to 49-year-olds and families with children up to the age of about 15. The key is not to acquire programming that alienates that traditional older core audience.

“We’re looking for high-end, high-rating factual series for primetime. We’re looking for presenter-led history, science and travel. We want powerful singles and smart entertainment, and maybe a panel show. We’re not looking for more traditional history and science shows that don’t have a presenter or some kind of hook, and we’re not looking for natural history that is not blue-chip.”

Key sales opportunities also exist at the network’s younger-skewing channel ABC2 where long-running factual entertainment series and “immersive” content like Louis Theroux’s programmes are in demand, according to Baker.

Earlier Baker told delegates at MipDoc she would loved to have acquired David Attenborough’s natural history series Madagascar for ABC1, while reality series Don’t Tell The Bride and Werner Herzog’s four-parter Death Row doc would have done well on ABC2.

She added: “For ABC, the national broadcaster, funded by the tax payer, budgets are always a concern for us and they’re very tightly controlled. We need to find enough good content that will appeal to an Australian audience that falls within our budgets.”