Taming the Dragon and the Elephant: Murdoch’s media in Asia

Murdoch’s entry into the Asian media market began with the creation in 1991 of STAR (Satellite Television Asian Region). As its website proudly admits: ‘STAR pioneered satellite television in Asia and in the process catalysed explosive growth in the media industry across the entire region. Coupled with the opening up of Asian economies, access to satellite television redefined the viewing experience for millions. Providing more people with more choice than ever before, STAR set new standards in content, production and variety.’ It is hard to dispute STAR’s claim of ‘setting the pace of media in Asia’, as it broadcasts 40 services in seven languages and reaches more than 300 million viewers in 53 countries. Over 173 million people watch STAR every week (STAR website).

Mapping the expansion and consolidation of STAR Plus and STAR News (Murdoch’s Indian entertainment and information channels), the paper argues that their success has been achieved by making programmes in Indian languages, such as Hindi, and by localising content, as well as the astute political approach that News Corporation has adopted in India. In China, Murdoch’s jointly owned Phoenix channel has followed similar approaches to the emerging television market.

Though their political systems differ, there are interesting parallels between the two most populous nations on earth: both have strong language bases and traditional cultures, a powerful state regulatory framework and a huge potential for consumers of media products. If the majority of the world’s population - 2.6 billion people - are consuming media, which may be Western-owned or inspired, but are available in Mandarin or in Hindi, how does it square up with the notions of media and cultural imperialism? This article argues for a rethinking of such formulations in the 21st century, warranted by China’s increasing integration into global capitalism.

The context of Murdoch’s entry into Indian media
To make sense of the impact of the Murdoch phenomenon on Indian media, it is important to understand the national context of Indian television which had experienced profound changes since the early 1990s, accelerated by the combined impact of new communication technologies and the opening up of global markets. As with many other sectors of the Indian economy, the gradual deregulation and privatisation of television transformed the media landscape in a country which had one of the most regulated broadcasting environments among the world’s democracies (Price and Verhulst, 1998; Page and Crawley, 2001).

The most obvious indication of this change was evident in the exponential growth in the number of television channels and the resultant expansion of mainly Western-based transnational media players into India, one of the world’s biggest television markets. At the beginning of the 1990s, there was no television industry worth the name in India, which until 1991 had just one state-controlled channel, Doordarshan, little more than a mouthpiece of the government of the day and notoriously monotonous. By 2004, more than 300 digital channels - some joint ventures with international broadcasters - were operating. This expansion demanded new programme content - from news to game-and-chat shows, from soap operas to ‘reality TV’ - which have been provided by a burgeoning television industry that is increasingly going global.

The process of rapid expansion and globalisation as a result of market liberalisation is also evident in the availability and growth of Indian television channels catering to a large Indian, and indeed South Asian, diaspora. Indian television is now available in five continents. In the United Arab Emirates, the vast majority of the population consists of foreign workers from the Indian sub-continent, making the oil-rich Gulf region a key target for television networks based in India. In Britain, for example, Indian channels - Zee, Sony, STAR Plus, B4U (Bollywood for You) available on Sky’s digital network - have dedicated viewerships. Indian television companies are increasingly finding a niche within the lucrative US market, where the Indian diaspora comprises one of the richest strata of society: of the nearly two million people of Indian origin living in the US, the investment firm Merrill Lynch estimates that there are 200,000 millionaires. They have an average income of over $60,000, compared to the national average of about $39,000, making them America’s wealthiest immigrants (Rajghatta, 2003).

India’s rapidly expanding economy and a pro-market government, coupled with an established satellite network, made the Indian market an extremely attractive proposition for transnational broadcasters (Pendakur and Kapur, 1997). Combined with this was the huge number of potential consumers - a large, growing and increasingly Westernised middle class, variously estimated to be between 200 to 250 million, providing global media corporations with unrivalled opportunities for running a wide array of satellite channels. Cable and satellite television have increased substantially since 1992, when only 1.2 million Indian homes had cable and satellite television. According to the trade press, in 2004 there are nearly 390 million television viewers in India, with cable and satellite penetration reaching more than 48 million homes and growing annually at the rate of 10 per cent (Satellite and Cable TV, April 2004).

STAR TV was the first major global player to recognize the demand for Western, mainly American, programming for an Indian audience growing up on the dull and drab output of Doordarshan, when, in 1991, it started beaming a five-channel satellite service in English (Plus, Prime Sports, Channel V, the BBC World and Movie). This became an instant hit with the English-fluent urban elite. However, it soon realized that to make a profit the channel would have to make programmes in a language that a majority of Indians understood and on themes with which the masses would be able to identify (Pendakur and Kapur, 1997; Thussu, 1998).

Having been in the Indian market for over ten years, STAR’s fortunes in India changed dramatically after its flagship channel STAR Plus launched Kaun Banega Crorepati, an Indian version of the successful British game show Who wants to be a millionaire, hosted by India’s best-known film star Amitabh Bachchan. The series helped STAR become the most popular private channel in the country – with an average of 40 out of the top 50 shows every week. In 2004, STAR claimed to be broadcasting its programmes to more than 31 million homes in India. However, given the international nature of STAR TV, these programmes were reaching a large trans-Indian and even a trans-Asian audience, as the STAR bouquet shows:

• - STAR Plus (entertainment channel, available in Europe on the Sky digital platform and on the digital cable TV platforms, NTL Home and Telewest, also available in Middle East and the Philippines)
• - STAR News (24-hours news in Hindi, also available in Europe, Middle East, The Philippines and Thailand)
• - STAR Movies (Hollywood blockbusters)
• - STAR World (available across Asia and featuring US programmes such as The Simpsons, Ally McBeal, Friends, NYPD Blue and Dharma & Greg)
• - STAR Gold (Hindi films, and available in Middle East and in Thailand)
• - STAR Sport (live sporting events, also available in East and Southeast Asia)
• - Vijay (catering to the Tamil market in southern India)
• - Channel [V] India (all-music channel, also available in Middle East, East and Southeast Asia)
• - National Geographic (documentary channel, also available in East and Southeast Asia and in Middle East)
• - Adventure One (‘adrenaline-pumping action from around the world,’ also available in Australia, Europe, Middle East, East and Southeast Asia)
• - ESPN (all-sport channel, available in East and Southeast Asia) (STAR website).

While they started out with mainly Western programmes, global players such as News Corporation have been forced first to Indianize, then regionalize and finally localise their programming to suite the range and variety of cultural and linguistic tastes encompassing the Indian market. As Table 1 shows, entertainment-led channels dominate the cable and satellite market, with the top three – SET MAX (part of Sony Corporation), STAR Plus and Sony TV (owned by Sony Corporation) - belonging to major global players.

Table 1 Market reach of cable and satellite TV – the top ten channels in India

Source: Data from TAM Media Research, Satellite & Cable TV magazine, May 2003

Despite the proliferation of cable and satellite channels, the market is shared between three major players – STAR, Sony and Zee. Like media conglomerates elsewhere, they have taken over smaller competitors to present a mixed ‘bouquet’ of programme offerings to reach the diasporic as well as the national audience. One indication of the transnationalization of STAR Plus is the increasing use of English subtitles in its programmes, to meet the demands of increasing subscribers abroad.

The rise of ‘Hinglish’ television
One major impact of Murdoch on media in India has been the changing nature of languages used on various television channels. Though not central to debates on media globalisation, the question of language is an important indicator of wider social change. In a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual country like India, language is a crucial element of cultural self-expression. With a well-established oral tradition of communication, 400 languages are spoken across the country, while the Indian Constitution recognises 18 languages. In terms of numbers of mother-tongue speakers, Hindi, with more than 340 million speaking it as their first language and many more as a second or third language, is the most widely used in India. It is also the language of India’s film industry, which annually produces more films than Hollywood.

Other major languages with substantial media markets include: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi and Tamil. English remains the link language - of higher courts, corporate world, bureaucracy and higher education. Although only a tiny minority of Indians (3 per cent is a conservative estimate) use English as a first language, the language carries a disproportionate degree of social and intellectual prestige, perhaps a reflection of the colonial hangover.

One key outcome of the availability of Murdoch’s television was the mixing of English and Hindi and the evolution of a hybrid media language - Hinglish. While a form of Hinglish had been in existence in urban north India for decades, it was popularised by private networks spurred by Murdoch’s entry into the Indian broadcasting market. It was Zee TV, India’s first private Hindi-language and most successful satellite channel, launched in 1992 by the Essel Group of Indian entrepreneur Subhash Chandra, which dabbled in mixing Hindi and English, skilfully developing indigenous programming and adapting Hindi derivatives of Western formats, such as game-and-chat shows, leisure programming and quiz contests. Zee was also the first network to elevate Hinglish by using it in a more serious genre such as news, which had traditionally always been in either pure Hindi or in ‘BBC English’ (Thussu, 1998).

Following in the footsteps of Zee, other channels, even those originally targeted exclusively at the English-fluent Westernised Indians, have been forced to use Hinglish to widen their reach. The deployment of this hybrid language on STAR’s all-music channel Channel V contributed to the popularization of Hinglish, particularly among the youth – a trend which in subsequent years seems to have influenced much of Indian television. The idea behind using a mixture of Hindi and English was to expand the channel’s reach beyond the Hindi-speaking regions of India and, crucially, to cater to the South Asian diaspora - part of an ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse group - which would be more amenable to a hybrid variety of television and demonstrate greater empathy with hybridised languages.

Members of the South Asian diasporic communities, especially second and third generations, who have grown up within other cultures, may speak a myriad of languages, but most of them at least understand some Hindi, due largely to the popularity of Hindi films. Catering to the taste of a younger generation, growing up on the diet of MTV and its local clones, STAR was following a trend that began in the Hindi movie industry, which increasingly uses Hinglish words and phrases in film dialogues and in songs. Advertising companies too have cashed in on this trend with Pepsi’s call for ‘Yehi hai [only this is] the right choice, baby’, breaking new ground in post-modern advertising.

One striking example of this global-local hybridisation is to be seen in the way STAR Plus, the main India-specific channel of the STAR network, was marketed. In a full-page advertisement, splashed across India’s main English-language newspapers and magazines, the network overtly expressed its support for going local. The advertisement provides an interesting insight into marketing strategies of media conglomerates and is a prime example of how language hybridisation actually operates. Presented as a mouth-watering selection of Indian delicacies on a banana leaf, the colour advertisement listed the main programmes of the week available to its viewers in the form of a menu, stressing their Indianness. ‘Hungry?’ it began, ‘taste kijiye Star Plus ka naya desi menu’ (Please taste the new national menu from Star Plus).

The advertisement talked of ‘drama bhaji’ (vegetable) and listed the ‘masaledaar (spicy) movies’ on offer. Promising viewers ‘garmagaram (hot) news’ and ‘namkeen naye (savoury new) attractions’ - teledramas, romance and crime series, it extolled the ‘meethe (sweet) musical shows’ available on the channel. It stressed the very Indian nature of its ‘chatpati (sharp) comedies’, featuring sass-bahu ki (mother-in-law and daughter-in-law) unbeatable jodi (duo) and of flying sparks when baap, beti and damaad (father, daughter and son-in-law) get together. The advertisement ended with the words – ‘Aapki boli - aapka Plus Point’ (Your own language is your Plus point).

It is instructive to see how STAR Plus marketed itself for what it saw as a very desi (native) constituency. All the programming was Indian, most was in Hindi (some in English and Hinglish), with Indian themes. The advertisement made a strong case for going native - Aapki boli - aapka Plus Point, being its motto. This change of strategy on the part of STAR- from aiming at the elite to a mass audience - and emphasising the foreign-owned channel’s national credentials - reflects growing realisation that localisation is a key part of globalisation of television culture.

The perils of ‘Murdochisation’
The apparent Indianness of much of Murdoch’s TV in India may indicate the power of indigenous cultures in traditional societies. Though most viewers choose STAR for its entertainment programmes, there is also an increasing audience for its news output. STAR network has a news operation in India – STAR News (the 24-hours news now entirely in Hindi, the language most widely used in the country and also available in Europe, Middle East, The Philippines and Thailand) as well as an English language pan-Asian news operation, STAR News Asia, operating from Hong Kong. For the huge Chinese market, the Murdoch’s stable has Phoenix News in Mandarin, available in East Asia, as well as mainland China as well as among the Chinese diaspora.

The Murdoch influence can be detected in the realm of news and current affairs television, which tends to demonstrate a shift from a serious to a more popular news agenda, driven by the logic of maximizing profit. As television increasingly defines how public opinion is shaped – in its national, regional and international spheres – such trends can only be described as worrisome. I have characterised this ‘Murdochisation’ of media as ‘the process which involves the shift of media power from the public to privately owned, transnational, multimedia corporations controlling both delivery systems and the content of global information networks’ (Thussu, 1998: 7). I characterised ‘Murdochisation’ by a combination of the following factors: a convergence of global media technologies; a tendency towards a market-driven journalism thriving on circulation and ratings wars; transnationalisation of US-inspired media formats, products and discourse; and lastly, an emphasis on infotainment, undermining the role of the media for public information’ (ibid).

Six years on, there is growing evidence of Murdoch’s political influence as a multi-media mogul whose extensive control of both information software (programme contents) and hardware (digital delivery systems) makes him a hugely powerful player. The Murdoch media empire straddles the globe, with wide-ranging media interests - from newspapers; film; broadcast, satellite and cable TV; interactive digital TV; television production, satellites; to the Internet.

The reach of Murdoch’s global television empire is worth a brief tour. In the US, his media interests are now extensive, ranging from film studios to television networks. By producing such internationally successful programmes as The Simpsons, Fox Network is already well established in the world’s most competitive media market, giving the three traditional networks - CBS, NBC and ABC- a run for their money. In cable and satellite homes too, Murdoch’s presence is growing, and not just in the area of entertainment television. With more than two million viewers regularly watching Fox News in the United States, it has now overtaken CNN as the key cable news channel in the country. As the Federal Communications Commission further deregulates television, Fox is likely to increase its hold on the US media market.

In Europe, British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), with majority ownership by News Corporation, is now one of the most profitable broadcasters. In the developing world, in addition to the huge Asia operations, Sky network has agreements with the Mexican television giant Televisa and other regional broadcasters for Direct-to-Home (DTH) operations, while Canal Fox and Fox Kids Latin America are among networks catering to audiences across Latin America (McChesney, 1999; Thussu, 2000, Page, 2003).

Apart from owning substantial chunks of satellite television, Murdoch also controls the largest number of English-language daily newspapers around the world, as well as such powerful international publishers as HarperCollins. This makes News Corporation one of the world’s largest media empires, truly global in its reach and influence. What distinguishes it from its rivals such as AOL-Time-Warner and Disney Corporation, however, is the fact that it is the only media conglomerate created, built and dominated by one man - Rupert Murdoch, the septuagenarian chairman and Chief Executive Officer of News Corporation (Page, 2003). As Robert McChesney has noted: ‘More than any other figure, Murdoch has been the visionary of a global corporate media empire’ (McChesney, 1999: 96).

A deeply conservative political agenda has characterized the creation of this media empire (Page, 2003). In Britain, for example, Murdoch has consistently used his newspapers - The Times and The Sun (Britain’s largest selling popular newspaper) - to champion the privatisation of broadcasting, thus undermining the BBC and all that it stands for, prompting the then BBC Director General Greg Dyke to caution against the escalating influence of Murdoch’s media (Wells, 2003).

In the US, Murdoch’s media has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Republican cause, including the deregulation of broadcasting. Analysing for 19 weeks (between January and May 2001), the Fox News channel’s flagship daily programme, Special Report with Brit Hume, the media monitoring group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) found an overwhelming slant on Fox News towards both Republicans and conservatives: of the 56 guests with declared political affiliations interviewed on the programme during the monitoring period, 50 were Republicans. Of the others, 65 of the 92 guests (71%) were avowed conservatives (Randell, 2001).

Murdoch’s media war
These political attitudes also reflect in the way Murdoch’s networks cover international conflicts. As an illustration, one could examine the coverage of the US invasion of Iraq. If Desert Storm of 1991 created the 24/7 global television news culture and launched CNN to a global public, the ‘war against terrorism’ has catapulted Murdoch’s television news networks into the international spotlight. With Fox News in the United States, Sky News in Europe and STAR News in Asia, Murdoch’s media are relayed to television screens around the world, giving him extraordinary powers to influence the coverage of the open-ended and global ‘war,’ including the US military intervention to topple the Iraqi government in March-April 2003.

Given his political leanings, it is scarcely surprising that Murdoch’s media have acted as frontline cheerleaders for the US military action in Iraq. In line with other major US/UK news outlets, Murdoch’s media played a central role in preparing and then retaining public opinion in favour of the invasion. In the words of Ignacio Ramonet, Director of Le Monde diplomatique, their key contribution was ‘to justify a preventive war that the United Nations and global public opinion did not want, a machine for propaganda and mystification, organised by the doctrinaire sect around George Bush, produced state-sponsored lies with a determination characteristic of the worst regimes of the 20th century’ (quoted in Pilger, 2003).

Even before the US invasion, Murdoch himself appeared to be keen on the ‘war,’ telling Fortune magazine that it could fuel an economic boom in the West. In an interview to an Australian news magazine Bulletin in February 2003, he expressed unconditional endorsement for the proposed military actions of US/UK leaders, praising George W. Bush as acting ‘morally’ and ‘correctly.’ No wonder virtually all of the 175 editors working for Murdoch’s newspapers unequivocally supported the invasion of Iraq (Greenslade, 2003).

However, it was television rather than newspapers which set the agenda for ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom,’ with Fox News playing an important role in legitimising US invasion. During the ‘war’ the 24-hour news network became little more than the loud mouthpiece of the round-the-clock operational Office of Global Communications in the White House. Fox’s unrelenting and literally flag-waving patriotism (with the US flag fluttering in the corner of the screens) and the description from its ‘embedded’ reporters of US war machine as ‘heroes’ and ‘liberators’, met with triumph in the ratings war. Even before the bombs started falling on Baghdad, one of the main presenters on Fox News, Bill O’Reilly, dismissed even mild scepticism about the desirability of military action or any disagreement on military tactics, telling viewers that the US should go in and ‘splatter’ the Iraqis. In this gung-ho approach, the network appeared to present the ‘war’ as a spectacle, with celebrity reporters such as the Contra-scandal star Colonel Oliver North, filing live from Iraq.

Moreover, in this version of televised ‘regime change’, military action was couched in the language of a war of liberation, and sometimes presented in the form of an entertainment show, drawing on visual techniques borrowed from Hollywood. The rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, who became an icon of the conflict, provided an example of mixing entertainment and information, no doubt influenced by the Hollywood film Saving Private Ryan. It is now known that Lynch’s courageous ‘rescue’ by US Special Forces from Iraqi captors, was in fact a morale-boosting event staged for television cameras.

Weeks after the actual incident, a BBC documentary showed that the Iraqi doctors had looked after her well. One of the doctors who treated Jessica told the BBC: ‘It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, “Go, go, go,” with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show – an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down the doors’ (BBC, 2003).

The toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in a square in central Baghdad, conveniently next to the hotel where the world’s media were staying, was another example of a staged event, giving the impression that US troops were removing the statue at the behest of crowds of cheering Iraqis. In reality, it was the culmination of a well-orchestrated propaganda operation at the most crucial time of the invasion, highly symbolic in its significance, not just for Iraqis but the wider Arab world.
Murdoch’s news networks appeared to be willingly part of the operation’s news management, which included arranging for embedded television journalists to report the progress of the invasion, from the perspective of Pentagon. Unfounded allegations were bandied about on news channels such as Fox to justify the invasion: that Iraq was linked to the 9/11 attacks; that it possessed vast ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and was ready and willing to use them.

Towards the ‘Foxification’ of television news
Such a one-dimensional approach to news reporting is not just confined to Fox News alone, given the reach of Murdoch’s media. In the market-driven broadcasting environment, it might justifiably be feared that Fox’s success could lead to ‘Foxification’ of television news in other parts of the world. Already other Murdoch networks, particularly in Asia, regularly use news reports and footage from Fox News.
If jingoism and blatant political partisanship can work in the US, why not elsewhere?

After all, newspapers and magazines have definite editorial slants and dedicated readerships precisely because of this reason. Why should broadcasters not be free to project certain viewpoints? However, in the UK Sky News has to operate within the remit of ‘due impartiality’, proposed by the government-appointed, though autonomous, Independent Television Commission, making it difficult for Sky News to openly pursue a political position. Given the cultural influence of the BBC and the public-service broadcasting ethos, Sky News has tended to follow the standards set up by the BBC news journalism. However, Sky is under constant pressure from its owner, to treat news from conflict zones as drama and as an event. Dissatisfied with what he perceives as its staid presentation and ‘liberal bias,’ Murdoch wants Sky News to become more populist. ‘Sky News is very popular and they are doing well but they don’t have the entertaining talk shows – it is just a rolling half-hour of hard news all the time,’ Murdoch told the New York Times.

These changes are also visible on Murdoch’s India news operation. STAR News, which until April 2003 broadcast news in both Hindi and English procured from New Delhi Television (NDTV), India’s most respected news and current affairs company, has changed its editorial focus. As the contract between STAR and NDTV came to an end, STAR News was revamped, some would say dumbed down. In its new spruced up, youthful and flashier incarnation launched in the middle of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the news network, now produced in-house, tended toward infotainment. Besides showing reports and live footage from its sister outlets – Fox News and Sky News – it reproduced, often verbatim, though in Hindi translation, the standard Pentagon line on the progress of the ‘war’.

Its only claim to fame during the Iraq invasion was that its correspondent in Baghdad was able to broadcast a live interview of an Indian businessman freed after 13 years in various Iraqi prisons with his family in Mumbai. The poignancy of this story was highlighted by the fact that the family which had fled Kuwait during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1990, had presumed him dead. This human-interest story dominated STAR coverage of a major conflict, which not only changed the government in Iraq but also had long-lasting regional and international repercussions. When it is not reporting conflict stories, the channel’s new team of anchors and reporters and 21 bureaux across the country, tend to follow a flashier news agenda that emphasizes metropolitan news. For example, its daily City 60 programme focuses exclusively on news events in India’s major cities.

STAR spent a huge amount on PR to promote the Indianisation of the news network, with a multi-million rupee advertising campaign, including Bollywood style songs eulogising the primacy of truth and fairness in reporting in ‘your own language’ and with the catch-line ‘apko rakhe aage’ (keeps you [the audience] in the forefront). The move to Hindi may have been engineered by market logic as shown by the fact that within one week of this switch STAR News ratings almost doubled.

Murdochisation as cultural/media imperialism?
What does this survey of ‘Murdochisation’ of media tell us about the local/global cultural interaction? How does this localisation relate to the notions of cultural and media imperialism? At the heart of these debates was the extent to which ‘Third World’ countries were dependent on imported programming, mostly from the US (Schiller, 1976; Boyd-Barrett, 1998). During the 1980s, there were concerns raised about the ‘Dallasisation’ of media cultures across the world as a result of availability of US soaps such as Dallas to diverse audiences. With the globalisation of the US-model of television such American programmes as Baywatch, Friends, ER and The Simpsons have a global viewership, although in media-rich countries such as India they remain very marginal to the mainstream media consumption.

The debates about cultural and media imperialism have ebbed as globalisation is increasingly seen as a harbinger of modernity and thus a potentially liberating phenomenon. Is it not a positive development that a majority of Indians are watching their television, made by Indian companies on Indian themes in their own languages to higher professional and technical standards than was possible under the monopoly of state broadcaster? Market-led broadcasting has certainly created a more open and wider public sphere in India. Given the types of programming broadcast on networks such as STAR, one can be forgiven for assuming that this is a national television network and has no connection with an Australian-born US citizen, who ultimately owns the network.

Does the ownership really matter? The evolution of Murdoch’s television in India – from English to Hinglish and Hindi and finally to other regional languages - shows that the processes of cultural globalisation is a very complex one and these warrant a new type of theorising going beyond the media/cultural imperialism framework.

As noted, although the programming, including news, is now mostly in Hindi, the rural poor are remarkably absent not only from news stories but also from dramas and serials, and not just on Murdoch’s channels. A socially relevant television agenda does not fit well with the notoriously competitive broadcasting environment within which Murdoch’s television networks operate, being primarily interested in the demographically desirable, Hinglish-speaking urban middle class, with the disposable income to purchase the goods advertised on these channels.

Despite their avowedly Indian identity, networks such as STAR are arguably merely clones of the US model of market-led television, susceptible to the same kind of commercial pressures that Robert McChesney has so comprehensively articulated in the case of US (McChesney, 1999 and 2004). In India, as television is driven by the ratings wars and advertisers’ demand for consumers, and given that visuals can be a powerful instrument for propagating dominant ideology, especially in a country where nearly 40 per cent of the population is illiterate, the electronic media can play an increasing role in the creation of a marketplace in which their corporate clients can consolidate and expand.

One key reason why Murdoch’s media have been able to localise content in India is the availability of indigenous programming. At the heart of the Indian entertainment industry are the country’s huge film factories, which have an annual turnover of almost $425 million - slated to hit $1.25 billion in the next five years. By the end of 2003, Indian movie exports were in the region of $1.5 billion. The Indian entertainment industry is expected to treble in size - from $3.3 billion in 2000 to nearly $12.5 billion by 2005, according to a report entitled The Indian Entertainment Industry: Envisioning Tomorrow, prepared for the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry by Arthur Andersen (Satellite and Cable TV, 2001).

In the twenty-first century, though the West continues to set the international cultural agenda, non-Western cultures are more visible than ever before. A cover story in the magazine Newsweek ‘Bollywood Goes Global’ intoned: ‘The West may have the biggest stalls in the world’s media bazaar,’ it said, ‘but it is not the only player. Globalization isn’t merely another word for Americanisation - and the recent expansion of the Indian entertainment industry proves it’ (Power and Mazumdar, 2000: 88).

Globalisation has given a fillip to Indian entrepreneurs and Murdoch has shown great skills to use it to promote his media interests in India (Ninan, 2003). There is an increasing tendency for joint ventures – the most significant of these is the one between STAR and Tata (India’s largest industrial house) with regards to the Direct-to-Home (DTH) television which is likely to be introduced by the end of 2004. As Indian and Indian-oriented television businesses begin to fully integrate with US-dominated global economy, it is likely that Indian television would become more visible in the international broadcasting arena. However, what kind of television will it be? To what degree will it be about hybridisation and appropriation of global genres of television?

As in many other countries, globalisation in relation to India has profoundly influenced its media cultures, forcing it to redefine its place in the world. However, this influence has been a two-way process. India has absorbed and adapted aspects of ‘global’ modernity but a lot from India – popular music, film, fashion, literature, computer software – has also been globalised in the 1990s as a result of marketisation. In the twenty-first century, television from India is likely to become part of transnational television culture – after all every sixth person in the world is of South Asian origin.

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Daya Kishan Thussu was formerly Course Leader for the MA in Transnational Communications and Global Media at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is currently on the faculty of the University of Westminster, London. A former Associate Editor of Gemini News Service, a London-based international news agency, he has a PhD in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is the co-author of Contra-Flow in Global News (1992); editor of Electronic Empires - Global Media and Local Resistance (1998); author of International Communication - Continuity and Change (2000), and co-editor of War and the Media: Reporting Conflict 24/7 (2003).