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Marketing and Promotions in Bollywood >> 87

reflexivity. . . . [I[t was the lack of accurate statistics that led to local and
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global dismissals of the casual nature of the Indian film industries.” But
these trade narratives also invite us to consider how shifts in capital flows
are leading to changes in industry logics and practices. In this case, it is criti-
cal to recognize that these new modes of financing did not just bring “clean”
money into the business of filmmaking.
Production companies like Pritish Nandy Communications, for instance,
brought with them notions of risk management and an apparatus of media
production, including a conception of the “audience,” that were markedly
different in an industry accustomed to a discourse of hits and flops. The
audience was imagined not only by those involved in the typical production-
distribution-exhibition cycle of a film—the producers, directors, stars, and
distributors—and determined, in the final instance, in terms of how many
people worldwide watched the film in a cinema hall. It was not only a matter
of speculation by distributors who, as Pritish Nandy remarked at a market-
ing seminar, “possessed an uncanny ability to smell what kind of film would
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work in which territory.” To be sure, well-established assumptions regard-
ing audiences were invoked. As Kumar Gaurav, one of the stars in Kaante,
reasoned when asked by a journalist why the film did not do as well as pre-
dicted: “It did not do well because it catered to a rather urban crowd, not the
aam junta [masses].” 23
However, the figure of the “audience” was also mobilized in interactions
between Sanjay Gupta, the film’s director, and Saleem Mobhani, co-founder
of the dot.com company (indiafm.com) that handled web promotions for
the film; between Pritish Nandy, founder-CEO of Pritish Nandy Commu-
nications, and Sanjay Bhutiani, an advertising executive from Leo Burnett
Entertainment; between Sanjay Bhutiani’s team and marketing executives
at Thums Up, a cola company that offered Rs. 70 million for in-film place-
ments; and finally, in negotiations between television companies and adver-
tising agencies, defined by the ratings points that the numerous television
promotions generated. The Kaante case thus made it clear that the “audience”
need no longer be defined and understood primarily in relation to the per-
formance of the film at the box office. It was reimagined as a construct that
had purchase in a number of different sites of mediation, the most promi-
nent and important one being television.
The importance of television to the reimagination of the audience
becomes even clearer when we recognize that the mahurat has been trans-
formed from being a primarily industry-oriented ritual to one that also
functions as a publicly disclosed media text that circulates via television
programs and an online network of entertainment dot.coms, fan-produced