ABSTRACT
Much has been wriĴ en in tracking India’s mediascape from the state-run channel Doordarshan to a dizzying array of channels once the airwaves were opened up to private broadcasting (see, for example Ninan 1995; Dyal 1992a and 1992b; Melkote et al. 1998; Brosius and Butcher 1999; Butcher 2003; and Mehta 2008). Rather than detailing once again the history of television in India, an appendix provides the major events in the Indian televisual landscape since the airwaves were opened up in the 1990s to satellite broadcasting. Suffi ce it to say at this juncture that “a unique confl uence of technological, political and economic factors in the 1990s drove the transformative process and fastforwarded Indian television through and beyond the process of development that had taken nearly fi ve decades to mature in developed western economies … so much so that we are now seeing the beginning of a gradual re-ordering of global media fl ow, with India transformed from a mere receiver to a major supplier. A great deal of evidence is now emerging to show that the rise of India … as [an] economic power has been accompanied by its parallel rise as a new global ‘media capital’ — the centre of production where information fl ows originate and are circulated around the world” (Mehta 2008: 59-60).
