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This article delivers preliminary findings from a series of interviews with Australian migrant producers, directors and writers. With the increasing calls for diversity in the media generally, and on television screens specifically from a wide range of stakeholders (institutions like Screen Australia, advocacy groups and high-profile media personnel of colour), there is ample empirical evidence that our public and commercial broadcasters have a long way to go in terms of 'reflecting' contemporary Australia. There is also more emphasis on institutionalised strategies, and looking towards overseas models to make this happen. Using the discourses of official and everyday multiculturalism, this article unpacks what it means to 'reflect reality', versus the meaning of various kinds of aspirational content, especially in drama and comedy. Such an analysis is crucial to understand the value of diversity beyond the simplistic rationale of 'reflection', and particularly in a changing mediascape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics concerning the trend in the performing arts and screen industry in Australia that has identified diversity as a valuable cultural phenomenon and urges greater representation and access to work in the media for Australians of diverse backgrounds.

Emerging literature on the rapid rise of 24-hour commercial news television in India in the last decade, as well as popular and editorial commentary on the above phenomenon, suggests that these channels are playing the role of mediators for the middle classes. While the news content is widely believed to be sensationalised for the sake of attaining higher ratings in an overcrowded and competitive market, political talk shows have turned into the analytical and narrative extension of news segments. By including the ordinary - mostly through its mediation by middle-class experts and journalists - these talk shows have turned into the popular culture equivalent of a public sphere for middle-class discussions of pertinent political issues. This article traces the genealogy of a long-standing political talk show on one of India's longest-running commercial networks, NDTV 24x7's We the People, to demonstrate its attempts to mirror an inclusive Indian public sphere. Further, in light of the recent middle classled anti-corruption movement in India, and subsequent conclusions about the weakening of the state, an episode of the talk show titled 'Anna and the Great Indian Middle Class' is subject to a detailed textual analysis. The purpose of this analysis is to demonstrate the show's construction of: (a) corruption as a pan-Indian, and not just a middle-class, issue; (b) the middle class itself as a homogeneous group; and (c) the televisual public sphere (and not a community consultation involving representatives of the state) as a place for establishing populist consensus. Literature on new political television and theories of the public sphere are used as theoretical springboards throughout the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While India's booming entertainment channels are often examined for their lifestyle content, the nation s equally vibrant English-language news networks can also be read as offering lifestyle-oriented content and advice. Talk shows of both the controlled panel debate and the more interactive studio audience discussion variety often veer into social commentary, particularly on issues pertaining to the transitioning social values of the middle classes, including normative gender. In light of this, this article examines a recent love, sex and marriage-themed episode of leading news channel NDTV 24×7's debate-style talk show, The Big Fight. Such discussions are often cast among 'respectable' middle-class Indian households as being 'too forward' to watch with the family. Do the panelists on these shows simply articulate 'respectable' middle-class sentiments, or are they drawn from a wider social pool? What is the role of the host in re-mediating the material under discussion? How do studio audience questions impact on form and content? Most importantly, what role does such programming play in the ongoing transformation of gendered social norms among the middle classes in India today? These questions are considered within the broader framework of the transnational talk show genre and its appropriation in a specific instance in the contemporary Indian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article foregrounds the manifestation of a contemporary Orientalist discourse in the global media sphere by reading the increasingly robust non-Western 'other' that is the Indian TV media through its remediation in the Melbourne-based paper, The Age. The particular institutions have been chosen due to the 'quality journalism' reputation of the latter outlet, and the frequency of references to the Indian media - particularly its numerous news television channels - during the spate of allegedly racist attacks on Indian students in Melbourne in 2009-10. Feature articles, news items and opinion pieces appearing in the paper on this issue from May 2009 to June 2010 are examined for mentions of, and comments on, the Indian TV media. Conclusions are then drawn about how the remediation of India and its media offered by The Age effectively redraws a nation previously receiving limited coverage (literally and discursively) in Australia. What is significant here is not the resurgent Indian as reflected in the coverage of the Indian media, but its specific television might remediated by The Age as powerful yet Bollywood-esque in its drama and spectacle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This themed issue of MIA highlights the complex nature of evolving, emerging, mediated public spheres in India, a large, imperfect democracy that is home to the most diverse mediated public spheres anywhere in the world. The history of the public sphere in India has followed a trajectory that is very different from - even at odds with - the history of this sphere as described by Habermas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]