Examines the development of television in India since the early 1990s and its implications for Indian society more widely, discussing the rapid expansion in independent satellite channels, and in viewing figures, and the corresponding growth in new ways of imagining identities, conducting politics and engaging with the state.

'Excellent...an incisive and much needed study of how television is changing India.' - Rajdeep Sardesai, Managing Editor, CNN-IBN and IBN-7More than fifty 24-hour news networks, operating in eleven different languages, emerged in India between 1992 and 2006. This book traces the evolution of satellite television and how it effected major changes in political culture, the state, and expressions of Indian nationhood. Explaining how television, a medium that developed in the industrial West, was adapted to suit Indian conditions, the book focuses specifically on the emergence of satellite news channels. It shows how live television used new forms of technology to plug into existing nodes of communication, which in turn led to the creation of a new visual language - national, regional and local - that altered politics and forms of identity formation in significant ways. Satellite television came to India as the representative of global capitalism in the early 1990s and crushed the governmental monopoly over broadcasting that had existed since independence. As such, the story of satellite news is also the story of India's encounter with the forces of globalisation. 'Accumulated with an insider's knowledge...a genuine contribution to the literature, bringing together valuable material that deserves a wide audience.' - Prof. Arvind Rajagopal, author of Politics After Television.

An analysis of the use of media by political and religious interest groups in India

This book examines the evolution and journey of regional language television channels in India. The first of its kind, it looks at the coverage, uniqueness, ownership, and audiences of regional channels in 14 different languages across India, covering Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Urdu, Assamese, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Odia, Punjabi, and Malayalam. It brings together researchers, scholars, media professionals, and communication teachers to document and reflect on language as the site of culture, politics, market, and social representation. The volume discusses multiple media histories and their interlinkages from a subcontinental perspective by exploring the trajectories of regional language television through geographical boundaries, state, language, identities, and culture. It offers comparative analyses across regional language television channels and presents interpretive insights on television culture and commerce, contemporary challenges, mass media technology, and future relevance. Rich in empirical data, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of media studies, television studies, communication studies, sociology, political studies, language studies, regional studies, and South Asian studies. It will also be useful to professionals and industry bodies in television media and is broadcasting, journalists, and television channels.

This book examines the phenomenon of prime time soap operas on Indian television. An anthropological insight into social issues and practices of contemporary India through the television, this volume analyzes the production of soaps within India’s cultural fabric. It deconstructs themes and issues surrounding the "everyday" and the "middle class" through the fiction of the "popular". In its second edition, this still remains the only book to examine prime time soap operas on Indian television. Without in any way changing the central arguments of the first edition, it adds an essential introductory chapter tracking the tectonic shifts in the Indian "mediascape" over the past decade – including how the explosion of regional language channels and an era of multiple screens have changed soap viewing forever. Meticulously researched and persuasively argued, the book traces how prime time soaps in India still grab the maximum eyeballs and remain the biggest earners for TV channels. The book will be of interest to students of anthropology and sociology, media and cultural studies, visual culture studies, gender and family studies, and also Asian studies in general. It is also an important resource for media producers, both in content production and television channels, as well as for the general reader.

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.

An ethnography of urban women television viewers in India, and their reception of particular shows, especially in relation to issues of gender and nation.

This book offers a historical understanding of the Indian Audio-Visual media as well as examines and deconstructs the relationship between fact and fiction, history and imagination, nationalism and communalism, nation and gender, history and war, media and mentality and cinema and social identities particularly in Hindi cinema.

What is happening to India's television industry? How is it adapting to the rapid changes in the country? And what does India's television programming tell us about the state of the nation? Television touches almost everyone. It is rapidly expanding and becoming socially ever-more powerful, but is simultaneously facing a crisis of credibility. In Behind a Billion Screens, Nalin Mehta looks closely at how television works in India, how TV channels make their money - or not - and what this means for the cacophony that appears on our screens. Given that television is a strategically vital social gateway for power, he also probes the ownership of television networks - politicians, corporations, real-estate tycoons - and tells us why this matters. Based on extensive research and wide-ranging conversations with industry leaders, channel heads, policy makers and politicians, this is a comprehensive report on the state of the Indian television industry, how it is shapeshifting in response to the ferment of mobiles and social media and its vital role in the wider Indian story. Everybody watches television, everybody has an opinion on it and everybody claims to have solutions, but Mehta brings new research and understanding to illuminate a topic that often raises a lot of heat and smoke but little light.