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This book examines the process of transnationalization of Latin American television industries. Drawing upon six representative case studies spanning the subcontinent’s vast and diverse geo-political and cultural landscape, the book offers a unique exploration of the ongoing formation of interrelated cultural, technological, and political landscapes, from the mid-1980s to the present. The chapters analyse the international circulation of the genres and formats of entertainment television across the subcontinent to explore the main driving forces propelling the production and consumption of television contents in the region, and what we can learn about the cultural and social identities of Latin American audiences following the journey of genres, formats, and media personalities beyond their own national borders. Taking a contemporary interdisciplinary approach to the study of transnational television industries, this book will be of significant interest to scholars and students of television and film studies, communication studies, Latin American studies, global media studies, and media and cultural industries.

This chapter makes an empirical contribution to challenges the developing economies, often referred to as the global south, face when it comes to digital migration. This challenge has citizens of what were previously regarded as ‘third world countries’ having to rely on predominantly state and to a limited extent, public broadcast media for current news and information. This contribution, in making a seminal contribution on digitisation in Zimbabwe, demonstrates the challenges the country faces as to allow citizens access to more diversity and not just plurality. Conceptually, digitisation is defined as the conversion of analogue content and production processes into digital format (Manzuch 2009). Seabright and Weeds (2007, 1) observe that digitisation has to do with ‘replacing analogue signals with digital format economises on processing, storage and transmission capacity, reducing costs and expanding capabilities’. Seabright and Weeds (2007) submit that moving from analogue to a digital space brings changes in digital recording and production techniques, digital compression in transmission, proliferation in transmission platforms (terrestrial, cable, satellite and broadband); digital set-top boxes and encryption technologies; and digital personal video recorders. These interventions contribute to lowering of costs, improving of picture quality and improving speed in news gathering and dissemination (Koss et al. 2013). Other than the financial and technical imperatives that come with digitisation, the transition comes with certain cultural and political implications (Gripsrud 2009).

The year 2015 was set by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for most of its member states globally to switch from analogue to digital terrestrial broadcasting. Digital television broadcasting is generally implied as transmission of broadcast content signals in the form of binary data, specifically 0 s and 1 s. Digitisation of television merges broadcasting, computing and telecommunications to transform both the way television content is made and consumers interact with content (Chalaby and Segell 1999). Referring to digital content, Flew (2004) suggested that digitisation of media and communication content grows “informatisation” of society.

The transition to digital television referred to as the Digital Switchover (DSO) process or Digital Migration is an agreement of member countries of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) at the Geneva Conference in 2006. The agreement requires changes to national spectrum allocation and redefines national participation in the global digital television and mobile telephony market. While the decision of most African states to embark on the digital migration programme remains independent, the policies and approach to the implementation were influenced by two dominant economic orthodoxies, the neoliberal free market (Becchio and Leghissa 2016; Johnson 2011; Overbeek and Apeldoorn 2012; Peters 2011) which promotes a media environment mainly driven by market imperatives and the Chinese State capitalism (Bremmer 2008; Gu et al. 2016; Lyons 2007; Szamosszegi and Kyle 2011; Xing and Shaw 2013) which is the economic ideology that drives the interventions of the Chinese government in the region’s digital migration.

The internet has impacted on how media organisations do journalism. Many media organisations both print and broadcast now have an online presence to reach out to fragmented audiences that have migrated to online platforms. Television stations have increasingly embraced the use of digital (online) media to gain better access to their audiences in terms of content distribution and audience engagement. The rise of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram have given journalists and media organisations the ability to reach their audiences immediately, with the added benefit of audience responses which come almost immediately. The use of new digital media has created platforms for news stations to share digital clips of news items or excerpts of news programmes to keep the audiences informed or enticed by the highlights.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine how the digitization of television has impacted the architecture of television content generation, dissemination consumption in Kenya. Its key motivation is to answer two main questions: How has the digitization shift in Kenya’s television impacted the trends in production, dissemination, reception and consumption of television content; what is the effect of digitization on viewer satisfaction; and how has this shift transformed the role of television medium in the country? The chapter, therefore, answers these questions focusing on the television channels under study, namely, Citizen TV, Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) and Nation TV (NTV).

There has been a hype regarding the benefits of digital migration, which refers to switchover from analogue to digital broadcasting. Commonly referred to as digital migration, the switchover emanates from a decision made at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in 2006 to release a valuable spectrum, which can be used for other services. Other benefits of digital TV include good sound and picture quality and availability of more channels giving viewers more choice. It has also been said that digital broadcasting will save the broadcasting stations’ cost, as transmitting content via digital platforms is less costly than transmitting via the analogue platform (Muthomi 2012). This implies that media houses can capitalise on this migration as a competitive advantage. Countries across the world have been undergoing this necessary switchover from analogue to digital platforms, with varying degree of success. While the merits of digital television are clear, it is not clear how this digitisation will realistically help in bridging habitual inequalities in developing countries.

Colonisation bequeathed classical education, among others, to the African continent. The post-colonial utility, function and status of such a knowledge system have been questioned and resisted, and African knowledgebased institutions are making efforts to decolonise such systems. The decolonial project has also impacted popular culture in the sense that African identity and self-presentation are being interrogated using various methods. Adaptations and productions of classical myths are implicated in this discourse. Implicated adaptations serve as platforms for allegorical cross-cultural conversation on shared experiences of a people group, perhaps of an earlier generation with the assumption of partial or absolute continuities. Continuity discourse is problematic when two cultures are implicated, particularly, when one is a colonial culture and the other colonised. The unity of discourse is either affirmed, violated or reconstituted.

The term digital “disruption” conjures up negative connotations, with implications of disturbance, interference or interruption. Certainly, virtually every aspect of life has been affected by digitisation, but it has been pointed out that it is detrimental “only for those who chose to ignore it or try to fight it” (“Digital Disruption: What Is It?” 2016, para 2). One case in point is the American company Kodak. Where it once dominated the film and camera market for most of the twentieth century, the company recently filed for bankruptcy. Kodak’s mistake was continually opposing the digitisation of the industry and failing to read the writing on the wall (“Digital Disruption: What Is It?” 2016). Digitisation is as much a reality of life in the newsroom as it is in the boardroom.

Until recently, the South African television industry was dominated by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), etv, and Multichoice. The SABC and etv are free to air while Multichoice provides a satellite subscription service through its DSTV bouquet. This status quo was broken with the emergence of subscription video on demand (SVOD). While Multichoice launched its SVOD service, Showmax, in 2015, greater disruption happened in January 2016 when the current most successful global company in SVOD, Netflix, simultaneously launched in 130 countries including South Africa. The coming of Netflix to South Africa was reportedly greeted by excitement as viewers embraced choice of access to premium television entertainment. Considering that prior to this development, Multichoice had had a near monopoly in provision of premium television content through its DSTV and Showmax, the reported excitement came as no surprise.

Despite great heterogeneity, the vast continent of Africa and the diverse people of its countries and diasporas have often been represented through the most reductive, essentialising, and denigrating paradigms— a process that Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi has referred to as “the danger of a single story”. One of the most dangerous of these paradigms is the developmentalist one, which shoehorns Africa into a western, capitalist teleological framework that overlooks and denies Africa’s production of and participation in forms of leisure, pleasure and entertainment.

Drawing on original research I conducted in the late 1980s, the book argues for a critical approach to the study of children and television. It begins with critical reappraisals of previous empiricist and interpretative studies to set the ground for a different theoretical inquiry which links biography with history. The situated activity of children's television viewing therefore has to be related to the broader historical and cultural formations in post-Mao China. By way of a methodological pluralism of questionnaire survey, in-depth interviews and observation, the book provides the reader with a thorough critical analysis of the rise of the new commercial ethic in Chinese society in general, and in the sector of media and communications in particular, at the very historical turning point of the late 1980s. Soon after that, Deng Xiaoping made his significant tour to south China, reckoning a big step forward towards further liberalization and started to form a brave new world in China ever since.

Chinese Television and Soft Power Communication in Australia discusses China’s soft power communication approach and investigates information handling between China and its targeted audiences in the eyes of key influencers – intermediate elites (public diplomacy policy elites in particular) in China and Australia. It explores CGTN (with staff from several professional cultures) and conducts a systemic test of how successful/unsuccessful China’s soft power message projection is in terms of congruence between projected and received frames as a pivotal factor of its power status. The analysis is based on a case study of frames in the messaging on Chinese international TV about China’s Belt and Road Initiative and in the minds of Australian public diplomacy policy elites. The question raised is whether and how Australia is listening.

This book examines the role of 24/7 television news channels in Bangladesh. By using a multi-sited ethnography of television news media, it showcases the socio-political undercurrents of media practices and the everydayness of TV news in Bangladesh. It discusses a wide gamut of issues such as news making; localised public sphere; audience reaction and viewing culture; impact of rumours and fake news; socio-political conditions; protest mobilization; newsroom politics and perspectives from the ground. An important intervention in the subject, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of media studies, journalism and mass communication, anthropology, cultural studies, political sociology, political science, sociology, South Asian studies, as well as television professionals, journalists, civil society activists, and those interested in the study of Bangladesh.

Before the liberalisation of television in 2000, Pakistan had one terrestrial channel.The Pakistan Television Corporation (commonly known as PTV) had been the statebroadcaster since 1964 and thus PTV content reflected the policies of differentgovernments. Liberal governments relaxed control over gender on screen – womencould be seen without dupatta – while religiously inclined governments brought intheir own agendas with restrictions on appearance of women, such as the dupattapolicy (see, for example, Ali, 1986; Suleman, 1990; Kothari, 2005; Nasir, 2012).1 In2002, the Independent Media Corporation launched its channel Geo News fromPakistan, followed by other networks, marking the formal launch of the policy ofliberalisation of media on television. Presently, five media groups have control of thePakistani media industry, including electronic and print media. These are Inde-pendent Media Corporation, Pakistan Herald Publications, ARY Group, WaqtGroup and Lakson Group (see for example Proffitt and Rasul, 2013). The broad-casting industry in Pakistan follows an advertiser-driven model that is run through asystem of ratings. At the time of the fieldwork reported here (October-April 2011),Media Logic and Gallup were the two operators that determined the popular tastesof consumers through ratings.2

Over the last decade Spain and Mexico have both produced an extraordinary wealth of television drama. Drawing on both national practices of production and reception and international theories of textual analysis this book offers the first study of contemporary quality TV drama in two countries where television has displaced cinema as the creative medium that shapes the national narrative. As dramatized societies, Spain and Mexico are thus at once reflected and refracted by the new series on the small screen.

Katharina Nötzold explores whether and how mass media can contribute to nation-building after civil war. Drawing on the example of Lebanon’s audiovisual media organisations, which are mostly privately owned by politicians, she demonstrates how political elites use television to transmit their visions of post-war society. Lebanon’s nation-building process from 1990 to 2005 was characterized by Syrian dominance over political life. From an extensive content analysis of Lebanese news and interviews with analysts, journalists and managers from all Lebanese TV stations, it emerges that political information on television focused more on divisive experiences than cohesive ones. This has underpinned continued sectarianism in Lebanon, in the media as in society at large, and has impeded nation-building. Biographische Informationen Katharina Nötzold is a political scientist and RCUK Research Fellow at the University of Westminster's Arab Media Centre, and she completed her PhD in Media and Communications at the University of Erfurt, Germany. She lived in Beirut and Amman and worked previously for the Center for International Peace Operations, Berlin. She is editor of Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture and author of articles on Arab media and media representations of migrants and Islam. Reihe Medien und politische Kommunikation – Naher Osten und islamische Welt - Band 19

The years following the Cultural Revolution saw the arrival of television as part of China's effort to 'modernize' and open up to the West. Endorsed by the Deng Xiaoping regime as a 'bridge' between government and the people, television became at once the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party and the most popular form of entertainment for Chinese people living in the cities. But the authorities failed to realize the unmatched cultural power of television to inspire resistance to official ideologies, expectations, and lifestyles. The presence of television in the homes of the urban Chinese strikingly broadened the cultural and political awareness of its audience and provoked the people to imagine better ways of living as individuals, families, and as a nation. Originally published in 1991, set within the framework of China's political and economic environment in the modernization period, this insightful analysis is based on ethnographic data collected in China before and after the Tiananmen Square disaster. From interviews with leading Chinese television executives and nearly one hundred families in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Xian, the author outlays how Chinese television fosters opposition to the government through the work routines of media professionals, television imagery, and the role of critical, active audience members.

The aftermath of Japan's 1945 military defeat left its public institutions in a state of deep crisis; virtually every major source of state legitimacy was seriously damaged or wholly remade by the postwar occupation. Between 1960 and 1990, however, these institutions renewed their strength, taking on legitimacy that erased virtually all traces of their postwar instability.How did this transformation come about? This is the question Ellis S. Krauss ponders in Broadcasting Politics in Japan; his answer focuses on the role played by the Japanese mass media and in particular by Japan's national broadcaster, NHK. Since the 1960s, television has been a fixture of the Japanese household, and NHK's TV news has until very recently been the dominant, and most trusted, source of political information for the Japanese citizen. NHK's news style is distinctive among the broadcasting systems of industrialized countries; it emphasizes facts over interpretation and gives unusual priority to coverage of the national bureaucracy. Krauss argues that this approach is not simply a reflection of Japanese culture, but a result of the organization and processes of NHK and their relationship with the state. These factors had profound consequences for the state's postwar re-legitimization, while the commercial networks' recent challenge to NHK has helped engender the wave of cynicism currently faced by the state. Krauss guides the reader through the complex interactions among politics, media organizations, and Japanese journalism to demonstrate how NHK television news became a shaper of Japan's political world, rather than simply a lens through which to view it.

"Though the television industry in China is enormous, fewer people are watching television screens. In this groundbreaking study, Michael Keene shows how television content is changing, how the Chinese government is responding to the challenges presented by digital media, and how businesses are brokering alliances in both traditional and new media sectors. Keane outlines the process of making content in China, focusing on regulatory institutions, ownership, censorship, programmes and channels, copygright, formats and the role of media bases. Spanning a wide variety of genres, the book examines four models of content internationalisation: licensing of programmes, formats, co-productions and online media. Written in an accessible style by one of the world's leading experts on China's media, this book explores how streamed online content is impacting on the state's control of ideas and management of the traditional broadcasting sector. This is the authoritative text for scholars, students, businesses and policy makers wanting to understand how the rapid evolution of Chinese media aligns with the nation's soft power initiatives"--Back cover.