ABSTRACT
The changes in the relationship between television and national culture over the 1990s will mostly be driven by a combination of globalisation, minority self-assertion, and geopolitical refashionings of nations and national arrangements in the new international order. It is contemporary fashion not only to see these as holding out different prospects for television and national culture, but to see them as fundamentally compromising the projects of national culture—national cultural policy, broadcasting regulation, national identity. The television networks and especially the international television suppliers benefit more from a deregulated market than the domestic television drama and documentary production industry. Television policy was captured in Australia, as elsewhere, by domestic elites. But in Australia these were also—as in the United States—business elites. Television's import mix is becoming more important as additional television services develop, advertising growth becomes limited, and new services erode the audience shares of existing licensees.
