Unity in Diversity
The public television endeavor in South Africa to translate a multicultural ideology into programming addresses the plurality of citizen-viewers in the country through the stipulation of language and local content quotas, among other corporate objectives. But the way women negotiate television's attempts to reproduce a shared sense of national identity and the manner in which they view television as a means to participate in the national public sphere have not yet been assessed. This chapter intervenes by investigating the heterogeneous manner in which audiences utilize global and local programming in their identification as national subjects. First, white women offer an antagonistic response by distancing themselves from nation-building rhetoric and by expressing preferences for programming from other national contexts. Second, older black women collaborate by identifying with programming on television that they believe addresses issues of the nation directly. And, finally, a mixed racial and ethnic group of women demonstrate more ambivalent or critical responses to programming designed to bring people together around national concerns. The paradoxical responses of women to national programming suggest the exclusive qualities of the lived experience of multiculturalism versus the imagined success of the televised national project. 
 
 
Keywords: 
 
South Africa; 
television; 
reception; 
cultural proximity; 
multiple proximities; 
gender; 
race; 
class; 
multiculturalism; 
audience studies; 
globalization
Broadcasting the rainbow nation: media, democracy and nation-building in South Africa
This paper examines the politics and economics of media reform in South Africa during the 1990s. This process has involved the transformation of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) from a state broadcaster into an independent public service broadcaster, as well as the opening of the airwaves to new entrants in order to extend the diversity of media ownership and programming. The formulation of media policies before and after the elections of 1994 is discussed, with reference to the different interests involved in this process and their differing positions on how broadcasting should be restructured in accordance with new constitutional principles of language equity. The implementation of policies from 1996 to 1998 is critically examined, revealing the contradictory political and economic factors that have shaped the transformation of broadcasting institutions and the performance of independent regulatory bodies.
Tv Etchings in the Minds of Latin Americans: Conservatism, Materialism. and Conformism
reason is, similarly, that the amount of information existing about images in the other media is enough to make the adequate inclusion of it here impossible.’ The selection of television is not, however, arbitrary. Perhaps nowhere but in this medium is the imagery in point so clearly exemplified.’ And, whereas it can well be argued that the number of people reached by television in Latin America is still modest, the impact of this ’entertaining’ channel is outstanding. Furthermore, TV-transmitted images stand a good possibility of being representative of most images presented through the