Dealing with diversity: Australian television, homogeneity and indigeneity

Abstract

This article focuses on how the Australian television industry deals with diversity: the extent to which the cultural diversity of Australian society has been reflected in the representations on our screens and in the provision of opportunity within the industry itself. While this has historically been approached by assessing the evidence of inclusiveness in the representations on screen, it is important to be reminded of the role played by the structure of Australia’s media: especially in television, we have a highly concentrated commercial system which still addresses the traditional conception of a mass media audience in ways that almost inevitably tend towards the reproduction of an image of cultural homogeneity. Research into one of the most important interventions into both the established patterns of representation and the make-up of the local production industry – the National Indigenous Television Network (NITV) – is discussed as a means of highlighting the difficulties faced by such interventions and those committed to ‘turning off the whitewash channel on Australian television’.