The Albanese Government, the federal executive government of Australia, announced it has approved the use of the Spherex Classification Tool as a new mechanism of safeguarding and regulating content in Australia under the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act 1995.

How Spherex technologies assess your content's cultural fit for global audiencesHave you ever eaten something unique at a restaurant and wondered, and maybe even asked, what the chef did that made it so good?Of course, you have.

If you're one of the approximately 460,000 production companies on the IMDB Pro active COMPANYmeter looking to release a title that will attract an audience among the world's 7.7 billion people living in 200+ countries and territories, then you have your work cut out for you. Besides having to write a well-told, engaging story, you must decide where among the world's 300+ streaming platforms and 25,000+ linear channels to release it.

Creativity happens typically without the oversight of laws, regulations, and guidelines. That is unless you live in a country where government officials look over your shoulder (they do exist). For most writers, however, you can write whatever story you want, up to a point.

Have the economy and increased regulation created content's "perfect storm?"Despite optimistic Q2/Q3 reports from studios and platforms and indications of no mid-year budget cuts, a real possibility remains that unless the economy recovers to where revenues are more stable, the next fiscal year could see reduced content budgets and fewer purchased titles.

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.

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.