Book excerpt: Australian television has been transformed over the past decade. Cross-media ownership and audience-reach regulations redrew the map and business culture of television; leading business entrepreneurs acquired television stations and then sold them in the bust of the late 1980s; and new television services were developed for non-English speaking and Aboriginal viewers. Australian Television Culture is the first book to offer a comprehensive analysis of the fundamental changes of this period. It is also the first to offer a substantial treatment of the significance of multiculturalism and Aboriginal initiatives in television. Tracing the links between local, regional, national and international television services, Tom O'Regan builds a picture of Australian television. He argues that we are not just an outpost of the US networks, and that we have a distinct television culture of our own. '.a truly innovative book. The author ambitiously strives for a large-scale synthesis of policy, program analysis, history, politics, international influences and the Australian television system's place in the world.' - Associate Professor Stuart Cunningham, Queensland University of Technology