From the 1967 live satellite program "Our World" to MTV music videos in Indonesia, from French television in Senegal to the global syndication of African American sitcoms, and from representations of terrorism on German television to the international Teletubbies phenomenon, TV lies at the nexus of globalization and transnational culture. Planet TV provides an overview of the rapidly changing landscape of global television, combining previously published essays by pioneers of the study of television with new work by cutting-edge television scholars who refine and extend intellectual debates in the field. Organized thematically, the volume explores such issues as cultural imperialism, nationalism, postcolonialism, transnationalism, ethnicity and cultural hybridity. These themes are illuminated by concrete examples and case studies derived from empirical work on global television industries, programs, and audiences in diverse social, historical, and cultural contexts. Developing a new critical framework for exploring the political, economic, sociological and technological dimensions of television cultures, and countering the assumption that global television is merely a result of the current dominance of the West in world affairs, Planet TV demonstrates that the global dimensions of television were imagined into existence very early on in its contentious history. Parks and Kumar have assembled the critical moments in television's past in order to understand its present and future. Contributors include Ien Ang, Arjun Appadurai, Jose B. Capino, Michael Curtin, Jo Ellen Fair, John Fiske, Faye Ginsburg, R. Harindranath, Timothy Havens, Edward S. Herman, Michele Hilmes, Olaf Hoerschelmann, Shanti Kumar, Moya Luckett, Robert McChesney, Divya C. McMillin, Nicholas Mirzoeff, David Morley, Hamid Naficy, Lisa Parks, James Schwoch, John Sinclair, R. Anderson Sutton, Serra Tinic, John Tomlinson, and Mimi White.
1 The Rise of the Global Media2 Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy 3 Who We Are, Who We Are Not: Battle of the Global Paradigms4 Our World, Satellite Televisuality, and the Fantasy of Global Presence5 Flows and Other Close Encounters with Television6 Media Imperialism 7 Is There Anything Called Global Television Studies?8 Reviving "Cultural Imperialism"9 Going Global: International Coproductions and the Disappearing Domestic Audience in Canada10 Francophonie and the National Airwaves: A History of Television in Senegal11 On the Margins of the Constitutional State12 Television, Chechnya, and National Identity after the Cold War: Whose Imagined Community?13 Television and Trustworthiness in Hong Kong14 Soothsayers, Politicians, Lesbian Scribes: The Philippine Movie Talk Show15 Act Globally, Think Locally16 Where the Global Meets the Local17 Embedded Aesthetics: Creating a Discursive Space for Indigenous Media18 Local, Global, or National? Popular Music on Indonesian Television19 Marriages Are Made on Television20 Culture and Communication21 Narrowcasting in Diaspora22 Postnational Television?23 African American Television in an Age of Globalization24 Teletubbies: Infant Cyborg Desire and the Fear of Global Visual Culture
