Australian television has been transformed over the past decade. Cross-media ownership and audience-reach regulations redrew the map and business culture of television; leading business entrepreneurs acquired television stations and then sold them in the bust of the late 1980s; and new television services were developed for non-English speaking and Aboriginal viewers. Australian Television Culture is the first book to offer a comprehensive analysis of the fundamental changes of this period. It is also the first to offer a substantial treatment of the significance of multiculturalism and Aboriginal initiatives in television. Tracing the links between local, regional, national and international television services, Tom O'Regan builds a picture of Australian television. He argues that we are not just an outpost of the US networks, and that we have a distinct television culture of our own. '.a truly innovative book. The author ambitiously strives for a large-scale synthesis of policy, program analysis, history, politics, international influences and the Australian television system's place in the world.' - Associate Professor Stuart Cunningham, Queensland University of Technology

First published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Disability and Digital Television Cultures offers an important addition to scholarly studies at the intersection of disability and media, examining disability in the context of digital television access, representation and reception. Television, as a central medium of communication, has marginalized people with disability through both representation on screen and the lack of accessibility to this medium. With accessibility options becoming available as television is switched to digital transmissions, audience research into television representations must include a corresponding consideration of access. This book provides a comprehensive and critical study of the way people with disability access and watch digital TV. International case studies and media reports are complimented by findings of a user-focused study into accessibility and representation captured during the Australian digital television switchover in 2013-2014. This book will provide a reliable, independent guide to fundamental shifts in media access while also offering insight from the disability community. It will be essential reading for researchers working on disability and media, as well as television, communications and culture; upper-level undergraduate and postgraduate students in cultural studies; along with general readers with an interest in disability and digital culture.

Traces the emergence of Australia as a significant exporter of television to the world market.

This book provides the first up-to-date introduction to the shape and style of Australian television in the 1980s, 1990s and beyond. Traditional formats like news, current affairs and sport as well as newer genres like tabloid and reality TV are treated in detail. The authors use their expertise in cultural and media studies to take apart the medium in terms of text, genre, audience, nation, culture, policy, industry and postmodernity. Trends and developments that are taking Australian television into the future, such as the increasingly international orientation of the local industry and new services like pay TV, community TV and ABC satellite TV are also examined in depth.

Television is the most pervasive mass medium of the industrialised world. It is blamed for creating alienation and violence in society, yet at the same time regarded as trivial and unworthy of serious attention. It is the main purveyor of global popular culture, yet also intensely local. The Australian TV Book paints the big picture of the small screen in Australia. It examines industry dynamics in a rapidly changing environment, the impact of new technology, recent changes in programming, and the ways in which the television industry targets its audiences. The authors highlight what is distinctive about television in Australia, and how it is affected by international developments. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Australian television today. Stuart Cunningham is Professor of Media and Journalism at Queensland University of Technology. Graeme Turner is director of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. They are editors of the leading textbook The Media in Australia and authors of many other works on the media.

A discussion of a truly international range of television programs, this title covers alternative modes of television such as digital and satellite.

Australians have become increasingly visible outside of the country as speakers and actors in radio and television, their media moguls have frequently bought up foreign companies, and people around the world have been able to enjoy such Australian productions as The Flying Doctors, Neighbours, and Kath and Kim. The origins, early development, and later adaptations of radio and television show how Australia has gone from being a minor and rather parochial player to being a significant part of the international scene. The A to Z of Australian Radio and Television provides essential facts and information concerning the Australian radio and television industry. This is accomplished through the use of a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on directors, producers, writers, actors, television and radio series, and television and radio stations.

This volume explores how television has been a significant conduit for the public consumption of changing ideas about children, childhood, and national identity, via a critical examination of programs that prominently feature children and youth in international television. The chapters connect relevant cultural attitudes within their respective countries to an analysis of children and/or childhood in international children’s programming. The collection addresses how international children’s programming in global and local context informs changing ideas about children and childhood, including notions of individual and citizen identity formation. Offering new insights into childhood and television studies, this book will be of great interest to graduate students, scholars, and professionals in television studies, childhood studies, media studies, cultural studies, popular culture studies, and American studies.