When STAR TV began broadcasting into India in 1992, it was at the vanguard of an influx of transnational television networks trying to tap into one of the world's largest consumer markets. STAR's Western programming, bold marketing, and its later ownership by one of the world's largest media conglomerates, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, saw thename inextricably linked with the debate surrounding cultural change in India in the 1990s.

This book is not just a history of the development of TV in India, nor solely an exploration of its impact. It measures cultural change by looking at changing perceptions of Indianness, or the understanding of what it means to call oneself an Indian, and the role of transnational TV in the process of defining, creating and maintaining that identity.