Page 141 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

128 << Dot-Coms and the Making of an Overseas Territory

This situation can certainly be understood as one in which new media com-
panies were grappling with the challenge of creating and delivering content
that would attract enough consumers to make their businesses viable. Aware
of how transnational television corporations like Star, ZEE, and Sony had
successfully developed a range of film-based programming during the mid-
1990s, dot-com professionals like Mobhani sought to understand how they
could deliver Bollywood content to audiences around the world in ways that
exploited the “multimedia” and “interactive” nature of the Internet. On the
one hand, this challenge was hardly unique to dot-com companies in India. 40
However, in addition to struggling with the problem of repurposing Bolly-
wood content for the Internet, dot-com companies in India and abroad were
also burdened with the challenge of convincing filmmakers and stars in Bol-
lywood that the Internet could improve their fortunes. As Archana Sadanand,
who oversees a prominent public relations company, Imagesmiths, observed:

A few years back, say 2001–2002, not many producers were interested in
the Web. Billboards, print, and TV channels would be more than enough.
People like Subhash Ghai, who encouraged us to use the Web to promote
Taal, were exceptions. Most people in the industry didn’t take the Internet
seriously. Initially, they were skeptical about spending money for online
promotions. These days, when we come up with a campaign for a film, we
automatically include the Web, we send a press kit to dot-coms just as we
send it to Bombay Times or Dainik Jagran. Now things are different.

By late 2005, things were indeed different. In fact, within two years of the
dot-com crash and the subsequent stabilization of the dot-com sector during
2002–2003, companies like indiafm.com and indiatimes.com had emerged
as important nodes in the circuit of marketing and promotions and were
41
shaping Bollywood’s imagination of overseas audiences. The diasporic
bias that defined the development of the dot-com sector in India, then, was
only one of the factors that shaped Bollywood’s relationship with dot-com
companies. This relationship would also hinge on how well dot-com com-
panies could position themselves as key marketing vehicles for the overseas
market and more broadly, as knowledge brokers who could help Bollywood
stars and filmmakers imagine and understand the “NRI audience.” And dot-
com companies’ ability to establish themselves in Bollywood would in turn
depend on how well they capitalized on two key developments—the grow-
ing importance of marketing and market research in the film industry, and
changes in the realm of film distribution, particularly where the overseas ter-
ritory was concerned.