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ANUSHRAY SINGH promotion of multicultural media began in the 1980s to foster ethnic cohesion to ultimately help diaspora bridge into the larger Canadian community.” Though it is observable that, in the mass-media culture of the mainstream, exclusion of minorities is often found, Canadian multicultural policies are aimed towards alleviating that. South Asian ethnic media in Canada is often a fringe of the mainstream, for example, the Hindi-Urdu-Punjabi programs of OMNI TV (a private subsidiary of Rogers Communications), and other media like radio, newspaper and magazines in various South Asian languages. South Asian ethnic media is not able to coalesce into the mainstream Canadian media landscape. Similarly, in the Second Space, the Canadian mainstream media culture is observably a subset of the transnational North American one and is dictated by the American mediascape. The South Asian diasporic culture in the First space is a subset of the transnational South Asian one and is dictated by Indian economic and cultural products. The biggest problem with Canadian mass-media products compared to other Anglophone Western industries it the lack of distinct identity. Canadian cultural products are often indistinguishable from those of the USA. In comparison, the American mediascape has been evolving: its South Asian minorities are contributing significantly to the construction ofa heterogeneous and multidimensional Mediascape. Similarly, the mass-media cultural products from Australia, the UK and New Zealand also have their unique identities. In terms of mainstream and minority culture, Canadian identity has not evolved and lacks coherent representation of both its indigenous and immigrant identities. Mass-media communication is often a reflective and a dialectic* process amongst different communities in a region and the lack of common identity can lead to fragmented cultural belonging and disparate mass-media channeling: French Quebecois, English Canadian American and Immigrant-transnational identities. In a survey, many Canadians believed that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC, a federal government corporation) should provide “high-quality Canadian programming”*® with strong regional content throughout Canada. This means including South Asian and other minority identities in the Canadian context. The mass-media culture (especially the one spearheaded by the Canadian federal government) fits into the “multicultural” ethos of the mosaic, which can help build an integrated common cultural landscape, helping foster various ethnic identities of Canada, and I see the Third Space as an important enunciative framework 23. Robin Mansell, The Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy, John Wiley and Sons, 2011. 4 Irving, Mass Media, 223. 3% The CBC, Canadian Culture, and Media Concentration, Ipsos.com, 29 August 2002, https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/cbc-canadian-culture-and-media-concentration (accessed 20 March 2020). * 150 +
