We are committed to ensuring funded content is monitored by appropriately skilled assessors and staff, with consideration to cultural competency, in the interest of best practice and accountability of allocated funds.
Practices
Definitions
Monitor means listen to, watch or otherwise explore content with a view to establishing eligibility, or to check that the production was produced in accordance with grant guidelines, or to collect data relevant to grant program evaluation measures.
New content is content that has not previously been broadcast before.
In the context of this policy, a sample of a program / content is considered to be one full-length episode, or in the case of long-form productions (such as festival outside broadcasts), a sample is considered to be an hour of the longer broadcast. For a sample pilot, or for a previously produced series, an edited extract or ‘highlights reel’ may be provided for monitoring in order to demonstrate capability.
Typical program means a program that was not disrupted by a special cultural event/activity, illness or some other interruption to the usual broadcast.
Responsibilities
In order to appropriately consider cultural, platforms and other factors, content monitoring may be outsourced to, or undertaken by, specific people:
- It is preferable that content is monitored by appropriately skilled CBF assessors at the application and assessment stage and may be monitored by staff and volunteers at the acquittal and evaluation stages.
- First Nations-specific content will be monitored by First Nations assessors.
- Eligibility requirements within content presented in languages other than English that do not require fluency in the particular language such as percentage of music or spoken word content within a program may be monitored by staff or volunteers.
- Where staff and volunteers are not able to monitor content in languages other than English, paid services may be sought.
Procedures
- It is preferred that content is monitored via live (or on demand) stream or download. Where on demand content is not available other content may be supplied by the grantee for monitoring and they are asked to confirm that the program in question is a typical program.
- A person monitoring specialist content will listen, watch or otherwise explore the content and make assessments based on desired outcomes as expressed in the relevant grant agreement. Questions that may form part of the monitoring process include: Does the program sound authentic and locally produced? Is there reason to suspect that this program is not “new content”? Does the program meet or exceed the relevant requirements for spoken word content / cultural content / religious content? Is evidence required that confirms the input of the target community into the content?
- A person monitoring non-specialist content will have reference to the grant guidelines in determining: Is there evidence in the sample that the content engages with community services, women, young people or new and emerging communities? Is the sample of sufficient technical quality? Is the content creative? Is the content resource-intensive?
- Where a grantee may not be meeting funding conditions, the Grants Support Team will facilitate the appropriate people to monitor the latest edition of the funded content.
- Where content monitored has been confirmed to be typical and does not meet the conditions described in the grant guidelines and agreement, the CBF will consider options to:
- Decline the application
- Withdraw the grant allocation
- Seek the return of the grant funds
- Access grantee financial records
- Determine the grantee ineligible for current and future CBF funding
- Undertake legal action.
Date of approval by Board: 10 November 2016 and 24 March 2022. . Download the CBF Content Monitoring Policy (PDF, 343KB). Please contact us if you require a Microsoft Word version of this document.