The politico-commercial nexus and its implications for television industries in Bangladesh and South Asia

Abstract

Over the past decade, television has proven its political, economic, and cultural worth as the most influential mass media in South Asia. Taking Bangladesh as a vantage point, the article shows how informal political and economic affiliations have become crucial factors for media development in South Asia. Particularly, the article dissects the ownership structures and the formal and informal politics of licensing private television by Bangladeshi governments between 1995 and 2019 in contesting India’s regional media hegemony with harnessing a powerful indigenous ‘politico-commercial nexus’. Based on field-based research, this study reveals multiple areas of political struggle, regional contestation, and democratic deficits in the television industry. The findings widen our understanding beyond the bureaucratic processes of media regulation, revealing the deeper problem of unipolar political preconditioning and the increasingly authoritarian nature of the state vis-à-vis the ownership of media and its diminishing prospects for voicing plural and contending political perspectives.