Page 109 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

96 << Marketing and Promotions in Bollywood

“Dovetailing Cool with Bollywood”

“So tell me, what did Shashanka say?” asked Jiggy George, as soon as we
entered his office at Turner Networks. George had worked as the Market-
ing Manager at MTV-India and been a key member of the team in charge of
the channel’s transition during the late 1990s. In explaining that I was inter-
ested in his reflections on MTV’s “Indianization” phase, I also mentioned
that I had met people like Rajesh Devraj and Shashanka Ghosh who had
been instrumental in shaping programming strategy as well as brand identity
at Channel [V], MTV-India’s rival. “He said people working at music chan-
nels were worse than ostriches. They didn’t bury their heads in the sand, they
had their heads up their own butts,” I recounted. Laughing out loud, George
agreed: “Sounds about right. I remember that in the beginning, no one in
the film industry even thought about MTV. And for its part, MTV was quite
condescending and not Indian at all in any sense. Hindi film music was not
cool for MTV. And it took a while for us to recognize that the top artists for
Indian youth were Kishore Kumar, Mukesh, Daler . . . not Guns N’ Roses
and Slash!” In fact, MTV-India went off the air for two years and returned
in 1996 with a redesigned brand identity and, most crucially, with recogni-
tion of the importance of Hindi film music and “localized” programming
to its fortunes in the Indian market. Suggesting that the makeover was not
exactly an easy process, George went on to explain that the decision to start
with the “look” of the channel, especially the on-air promos, turned out to be
the right one and crucial in terms of reaching out to directors and producers
in the Bombay film industry who were skeptical, if not dismissive, of music
television. Bringing up examples of popular on-air promos, George reflected
on this period of transition:

Looking back now, did we do that for the trade? It wasn’t only for the con-
sumer . . . it was done to let everyone in the trade know that we were a cool
destination, and most importantly, that we liked Bollywood. Most of the
promos—chai wallah, maalish wallah, with eena meena deeka playing in
the background—it was more than to just connect with youth. From the
trade perspective, it helped create an image that we are cool in an Indian
way. Things like that began connecting with people in the film industry.
We made a conscious effort to change the way the channel looked. Because
from a TV perspective, there is a youth demographic. But if advertisers
don’t get you, you’re not going to get anywhere. Yes, I would argue that
all our promos were for the trade—the film business and the advertis-
ers. Reasoning internally was this—if Bollywood is the currency and if it