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This chapter analyses a profound transformation of Bengali regional-languagecinema since the early 1980s, a transformation that fundamentally changedthe industry and one that can arguably be attributed at least partly to thecreation of a Bengali television-watching public in the same period. Itfocuses on a trend that emerged in mainstream Bengali cinema during the1980s and was sustained thereafter, and brought into prominence a newconfiguration of elements previously marginal to Bengali films. This trans-formation was to do with mainstream Bengali cinema’s increasing adaptation of what are commonly known as the ‘‘masala’’ or ‘‘formula’’ elementsof Bombay cinema such as racy dialogues, stereotypical villainous char-acters, stylized fights and song-and-dance sequences. This new genre, whichhas commonly been discredited as the Bengali film industry’s totally unim-aginative imitation of the popular Hindi-language cinema of Bombay,completely altered what had been the dominant aesthetic of Bengali cinematill about the mid-1970s. Until this point, Bengali cinema was marked by itsclose relationship with Bengali literature and a Bengali middle-class worldview, greater realism than Bombay cinema or other mainstream regionalcinemas, and naturalistic acting styles, and was radically transformed by agrowing adoption of the ‘‘formula’’ elements commonly identified withpopular Hindi cinema. Industry sources, however, indicate that this newtrend was successful in boosting the Bengali film industry, which had beenswamped by a severe economic crisis since the 1970s. The industry’s crisiswas caused by a host of factors: the most important of these was the Ben-gali middle-class audience’s shift to television as a result of an increasingly unsatisfactory film-going experience in this period. The creation of a Ben-gali television public in the early 1980s shifted audiences from the cinematheatres, thereby significantly reducing film revenues in Calcutta, until then the prime market for Bengali films.

Growing up in England, it never really occurred to me to wonder why Inever saw cricket from India on television. Indian cricket was always insight; we had Bishen Singh Bedi in his mysterious headgear wheeling in forNorthamptonshire, Srinivas Venkatraghavan wrapped in sweaters at Derby,Madan Lal playing in front of handfuls of old men in the Yorkshire leagues.Yet the Packer ‘circus’ largely left India alone, and in England the touringIndian side became an unglamorous pause between the glorious tours bythe West Indies and Australia. Little was I to guess that once I started working in television, India would become central to the world cricketeconomy and crucial to the technological improvements in the coverage ofthe game.

This chapter examines the ideological and structural foundations of Indianbroadcasting policy as it developed from the 1930s to the 1990s. The chapter argues that the failure of Indian governments to make the most of radioand television for economic and social development stemmed from threesources: (i) the restrictive policies inherited from a colonial state, (ii) thepuritanism of the Gandhian national movement, and (iii) the fear, madevivid by the 1947 partition, of inflaming social conflict. The policies andinstitutions established in the 1940s and 1950s shaped Indian broadcasting for the next 40 years and have been significantly subverted only since 1992as a result of the transformation effected by satellite television.

The place of the media in an effective liberal democracy is generally seen assacrosanct. The media play an important role in the collection and dissemination of information and provide an avenue for keeping politiciansaccountable to their constituents.Mindful of the impact themedia can have onthe fortunes of a political party, and the careers of individuals within it, mostpoliticians in liberal democracies tend to tread carefully in terms of how theymanage their relationship with the media. Politicians hire public relations andmedia advisors, and seek media training in order to learn how to ‘use’ themedia to further their political aims. In the main, the approach of India’spolitical parties to media relations has become remarkably similar. However, an exception appears when we examine the relationship of theBahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and its leader Mayawati, with the media in bothits mainstream forms – print and television. Despite early attempts to engagewith the media, by the late 1990s the BSP was running election campaignswith a media strategy of almost complete disengagement. This has not led topoor electoral results for the party. In fact, the party has been in power in thenorth Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) on a number of occasions: in 1995,1997 and 2002, either in coalition or as a minority government. Upon winning minority government in the 2002 election, a journalist declared that ‘Inan age of television and information technology, Mayawati is a politician whodefies all conventional standards and norms . . . [and] despises giving interviews . . . ’(Bhushan, 2002: 18). In May 2007 the BSP won the UP state election outright to take power as the first majority government that UP hasseen for 15 years. Again this election was won while largely ignoring main-stream newspapers and television, with Mayawati even taunting journalistsafter the win, ‘I know you were upset I did not meet you during the campaign but I noticed that you had already run ahead with your conclusions, so Ithought why disturb you?’ (Gopinath, 2007).

The changing relationship between cricket and satellite television in thecontext of the Indian sub-continent has been a subject of considerablescholarly inquiry. That one nourishes the other is well known. However,what is relatively little known is the degree to which this interdependence hasgrown in recent times. So much so that cricket tournaments, or ratherdesignated TV tournaments, are being planned with alacrity by the Board ofControl for Cricket in India (BCCI). Television rights for these overseastournaments/matches spread over the next 4 years had initially generated $219.5 million for the BCCI.1 On the other hand, satellite channels too havestarted planning cricket programming around these tournaments, program-ming expected to generate millions in advertising revenue.2 While theorganization of such big-money events well encapsulates the symbiotic rela-tionship between cricket and satellite television within a burgeoning Indianeconomy, other local/regional dimensions of this relationship are often noless fascinating. Tele-visual hype generated on the occasion of a regionalcricket body election in July 2006 in West Bengal, especially by the multiple 24-hour Bengali news channels, drew attention to the local variant of thestory involving big-money television and even bigger-money sport. Thischapter, on the basis of two distinct case studies – the implications of the tri-nation 1-day series played in Malaysia in September 2006 involving Aus-tralia, West Indies and India, and Television coverage of the Cricket Asso-ciation of Bengal Elections in July 2006 – will comment on the complex andever-changing relationship between cricket and television in India. At thesame time it will attempt to question the rationale behind this growing interdependence and probe what this means for the Indian nation at large.

After four decades of state monopoly over television Indian viewers gottheir first taste of private television in the early 1990s. By 1998, the first of India’s private 24-hour news channels was on the airwaves and by 2007more than 300 satellite channels were broadcasting into Indian homes. Ofthese, 106 broadcast news in 14 languages and as many as 54 of these were24-hour news channels in 11 languages.1 These are conservative figures thatdo not include many foreign and local cable networks that also broadcastnews.2 Even so, the numbers are a stark illustration of how the Indian statelost control over television broadcasting despite its best efforts to the con-trary. No other country in the world has such a concentration of private news channels as India. The creation of a television public has significantimplications for democracy and this essay focuses on what 24-hour newsmeans for India. It argues that the emergence of television news networkshas greatly enhanced and strengthened deliberative Indian democracy.Commercial mass media stands at the junction of politics and the economy,enabling the entry of citizens onto the stage of politics, while simultaneouslyseeking to appropriate that energy for its own commercial benefit (Rajago-pal, 1999: 133). This is a claim that needs to be differentiated from the usual journalistic self-image of the fourth estate acting as vigilant defenders ofdemocratic ideals. That notion should not be romanticised too muchbecause news production itself is a cultural process that cannot be separatedfrom its social environment. News producers always function under certaininstitutional constraints that are endemic to the news-gathering process.Leftist and liberal scholars of the media differ in their emphasis but allagree that news production is always circumscribed by institutional filters.3News is ‘more a pawn of shared suppositions than the purveyor of selfconscious messages’ (Schudson, 1995: 15). Yet, the media are important,and while it is difficult to draw direct causal linkages, there is no doubt thatthey initiate and create a new sphere of political action.

The role of television in democratic politics has been a subject of politicalcommunication studies at least since John F. Kennedy’s performance ontelevised debates supposedly turned around his electoral fortunes and wonhim the 1960 US presidential election. In India too, the potential of themedium in political communication has mostly been analysed in the contextof how television coverage of political leaders and parties, or the lack of it,affects voting behaviour. This chapter differs in its approach. In analysing television’s role in electoral politics in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, it does not look at discourses prevalent on television. Instead, itunderscores how the medium itself has become a part of political discourse,particularly during elections. It points out how television acquired centre-stage as an electoral issue in the 2006 Tamil Nadu assembly elections, evengoing to the extent of dictating poll alliances. Tamil Nadu offers an inter-esting case study to understand the interface between television and Indianpolitics not only because Tamil films and state politics have been inex-tricably intertwined for decades, but also because the two notable political parties in the state have a stake in the private satellite television business.

For any exposition of the television news medium to hold merit itbecomes imperative to glide into the past to recover its earliest antecedent –the newsreel. Newsreel presentation involved an intimate relationshipbetween its producers and events that print reporters had never faced: it wasentirely dependent on pictures that required the camera to be in positionbefore they unfolded (Montague, 1938: 49). Thus, the early producers ofnewsreels discovered that at times when there was a lack of any worthwhileor pictorial news it was possible to create it. It was also possible to ‘experiment’ with news. Newsreels in the United States, therefore, experi-mented with everything: news borrowed from newspapers, studies by collegeprofessors, animated diagrammatical representations of a volatile stockmarket, and so on. Since newsreels were exhibited before drama perfor-mances and film shows in theatres, a great degree of dramatisation andsensationalism was not deemed out of place. They too became part of theentertainment media.

Launched in 1980, cable network Black Entertainment Television (BET) has helped make blackness visible and profitable at levels never seen prior in the TV industry. In 2000, BET was sold by founder Robert L. Johnson, a former cable lobbyist, to media giant Viacom for 2.33 billion dollars. This book explores the legacy of BET: what the network has provided to the larger US television economy, and, more specifically, to its target African-American demographic. The book examines whether the company has fulfilled its stated goals and implied obligation to African-American communities. Has it changed the way African-Americans see themselves and the way others see them? Does the financial success of the network - secured in large part via the proliferation of images deemed offensive and problematic by many black communities - come at the expense of its African-American audience? This book fills a major gap in black television scholarship and should find a sizeable audience in both media studies and African-American studies.

This volume is divided into three parts: 'Adaptation and Local Production in East Asia', 'Formats, Clones, and Generic Variations' and 'New Television'.

This chapter provides a description and critical analysis of Noah’s Arc , a Logo cable television series featuring a predominantly African American gay male cast. Queer theory and quare studies are used as theoretical tools to examine the conceptions of blackness in general, as well as representations of blackness in Noah’s Arc . Thereafter this chapter turns to an analysis of the representations in this series to illustrate how Noah’s Arc not only queers and quares notions of authentic blackness but also serves to expand various notions of blackness. Finally, this chapter provides a treatment of how whiteness and heteronormativity are implicated in this recent iteration of a racialized queer visibility in popular culture.

Fusing audience research and ethnography, the book presents a compelling account of women's changing lives and identities in relation to the impact of the most popular media culture in everyday life: television. Within the historically-specific social conditions of Korean modernity, Youna Kim analyzes how Korean women of varying age and class group cope with the new environment of changing economical structure and social relations. The book argues that television is an important resource for women, stimulating them to research their own lives and identities. Youna Kim reveals Korean women as creative, energetic and critical audiences in their responses to evolving modernity and the impact of the West. Based on original empirical research, the book explores the hopes, aspirations, frustrations and dilemmas of Korean women as they try to cope with life beyond traditional grounds. Going beyond the traditional Anglo-American view of media and culture, this text will appeal to students and scholars of both Korean area studies and media and communications studies.

This volume presents a series of papers concerned with the interrelations between the postmodern and the present state of art and design education. Spanning a range of thematic concerns, the book reflects upon existing practice and articulates revolutionary prospects potentially viable through a shift in educative thinking.

This book is about the processes of globalization, demonstrated through a comparative study of three television case histories in Asia. Also illustrated are different approaches to providing television services in the world: public service (NHK in Japan), state (CCTV in China) and commercial (STAR TV, based in Hong Kong). Through its focus, Global Media addresses a considerable lacuna in the media studies literature, which tends to have a heavy Western bias. It provides an original addition to the literature on globalization, which is often abstract and anecdotal, in addition to making a major contribution to comparative research in Asia. Finally, it offers a thoughtful causal layered analysis, with a concluding argument in favor of public service television.

In this updated edition of his acclaimed and award-winning study, Stephen Bourne takes a personal look at the history of black people in popular British film and television. He documents, from original research and interviews, the experiences and representations which have been ignored in previous media books about people of African descent. There are chapters about Paul Robeson, Newton I. Aduaka, soap operas and much more - as well as several useful appendices and suggestions for further reading.

Shanti Kumar's Gandhi Meets Primetime examines how cultural imaginations of national identity have been transformed by the rapid growth of satellite and cable television in postcolonial India. To evaluate the growing influence of foreign and domestic satellite and cable channels since 1991, the book considers a wide range of materials including contemporary television programming, historical archives, legal documents, policy statements, academic writings and journalistic accounts. Kumar argues that India's hybrid national identity is manifested in the discourses found in this variety of empirical sources. He deconstructs representations of Mahatma Gandhi as the Father of the Nation on the state-sponsored network Doordarshan and those found on Rupert Murdoch's STAR TV network. The book closely analyzes print advertisements to trace the changing status of the television set as a cultural commodity in postcolonial India and examines publicity brochures, promotional materials and programming schedules of Indian-language networks to outline the role of vernacular media in the discourse of electronic capitalism. The empirical evidence is illuminated by theoretical analyses that combine diverse approaches such as cultural studies, poststructuralism and postcolonial criticism.

Globalization has intensified interconnectivity among television industries worldwide. Interconnectivity happens through structural and institutional linkages among television systems and industries worldwide, resulting in an increasingly integrated global business governed by similar practices and goals. The dynamics are reflected in the popularity of television formats. On the surface, global dissemination of formats may suggest not only the global integration of the economy of the industry but also the standardization of content. A dozen media companies are able to do business worldwide by selling the same idea, and audiences seem to be watching national variations of the same show. At a deeper level, however, formats attest to the fact that television still remains tied to local and national cultures. Bringing up examples of Latin American cases, this article argues that television is simultaneously global and national, shaped by the globalization of media economics and the pull of local and national cultures.

Hong Kong is famous internationally as a financial market, a shopping paradise, and Chinese film production hub, but notoriously (and perhaps even attractively for some) Hong Kong is also a hotbed of piracy of computer software, DVDs, watches and toys.1 While many cultural products such as television dramas and movies are original and quite reputable in the region, media critics argue that the copycat phenomenon, which includes borrowing, inserting and modifying other cultural texts to augment local production, is common in the media and entertainment industries (Fung 1998). Whenever a new form, style, or popular culture trend emerges in Hong Kong, market forces soon kick in to replicate it. However, this kind of reproduction, as shown by the history of cultural production in Hong Kong, does not necessarily lead to a degradation of programme quality. Reproduction is not only a savvy strategy to reduce the financial risks inherent to new products, but also aims at producing ‘improved’ versions which can reap more profits for the industry.

In March 2001 a Japanese newspaper report entitled ‘Indians are addicted to a quiz show’ drew attention to a phenomenally popular television programme in India – a quiz show that attracts millions of viewers in which challengers strive to win prize money (Asahi Shinbun 2001). What was particularly eye-catching for the journalist was the profligately decorated studio set located in Mumbai (Bombay) and the caring guidance of the MC, a film star famous in India. The name of the show, as you might have already inferred, was Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?.

Unlike smaller nation-states in this study the People’s Republic of China has never really countenanced a scarcity of domestic television content. Supply has been constant, indicating both the importance and the sheer size of the sector. The nationalized broadcast media has for several decades churned out cheaply produced films, documentaries, dramas, and news programmes. During the last two decades of the twentieth century, however, audience demand for domestic content began to wane as more as more international programmes found their way into schedules, particularly in southern China. China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in December 2001 seemed to herald soul-searching among its media mandarins. What would happen? Would China be inundated by foreign content (the worst case scenario) or would China, as it has done over time, absorb and regulate foreign influences?