Did you know that Halloween, and similar celebrations, are found in many countries worldwide?

Culture is the combination of language, music, geography, history, religion, and cuisine that describes people in different world regions. Culture permeates our identity; it is our societal fingerprint.

Age ratings are coming to a platform you most likely use -- from TikTok rolling out content with a maturity rating system to prevent young audiences from seeing inappropriate videos to content regulators worldwide who have increased the extent to which they examine content for age and cultural appropriateness. We've previously discussed regulators' increased focus on violence , LGTBQIA+ , and cultural issues in film and television. As demonstrated by three announcements this past week, age ratings are making their way onto all types of media platforms.

Four of the Top 10 Q2 in-quarter film releases (three were in the Top 5) were banned in major film markets for culturally objectionable content, yet still broke revenue records . As we'll show, it doesn't take much to run afoul of regulators in today's top global markets.

As Covid-19 concerns persist and stay-at-home/social distancing continues, it's difficult to find a single industry unchanged. Even streaming companies, most of whom just gained a bevy of new subscribers, have changed their services. In early April Netflix dropped streaming quality in order to ease overworked broadband servers as people increasingly plopped down in front of the TV to escape the current state of things. In addition, the streaming company announced that they will alter specific elements of the parental control features. Among the changes-in addition to rating-is a new capability to filter based on titles . Though the broadband restrictions are easing as the pandemic limitations ease, the filter settings are the new standard.

With the unprecedented increase in the number of platforms available to consume content and the seemingly ever-increasing number of titles, parents are rightfully concerned about the type of stories their children can watch. One way parents or family members can determine whether a specific title is appropriate is an “age rating.” We’ve discussed in previous posts what age ratings are, how they differ between film and TV, and how they vary across countries. In this post, we examine the content regulators that assign ratings and how they perceive their role in ensuring safe and quality entertainment content is available for families in theaters and online.

Preparing a title for a global release is complex. Many components must be in place prior to starting a deliberate and complicated process. You’ll need a final cut, an accurate final script, trailers, posters, targeted markets, a release schedule, and an understanding of how cultural, regulatory, and political factors impact age ratings. These are critical components to the process, and missing even one of them can threaten the success of the entire localization project.

Following the latest VOD and OTT company M&E earnings, subscriber reports, and layoffs, one of the observations is that content acquisition budgets will shrink worldwide. There are several reasons for this: increased competition, increased production costs due to global price inflation, resulting pressure on studios to reduce costs to maintain profitability, and the concern that Netflix's subscriber loss will spread to other parts of the industry.