Page 149 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

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

when I travel around, I get a sense of whether people are talking about a cer-
tain promo, a film’s music, the stars, etc. and I convey that to different peo-
ple in the industry,” she elaborated. A few minutes after she had made this
point, Bollywood hero Akshay Kumar entered the hotel. Waving to Gossain
as he walked toward a throng of photographers and journalists, he raised his
hand to his ear, mouthing, “Call me.” “See,” said Gossain, turning back to
me, “I can call him to talk about an upcoming film, to give him my take on
how well the publicity is working. And I can do the same for a producer
who takes me on for a film’s publicity.” Professionals like Gossain, however,
had no basis to talk about the “buzz” in London, New York, or other lucra-
tive overseas markets. It is this space, defined by intermediaries like Parul
Gossain and marketing executives at television corporations and advertis-
ing agencies, which dot-com companies sought to occupy in Bollywood. As
Lokesh Dhar confirmed:

The way we gauge the buzz in the market here is through online sources.
Posters, banners and so on are designed specifically for the U.S. or U.K.
markets now. Plus, you can watch an ad on Zee TV and other satellite
channels. In India, you are seeing it in print, on TV, radio, and you are talk-
ing to people. But out here, I don’t know what your thoughts and feelings
are . . . with the Web, I follow user comments and I can feel the buzz . . . so
it’s extremely important for us in the overseas market. Out here, given the
geographic scattering, online is the only way to go.

Companies like indiafm.com seized this opportunity to position themselves
as powerful knowledge brokers who could help filmmakers and stars in
Bollywood “get a sense of the buzz” among overseas audiences and imag-
ine the vast and vaguely defined overseas territory in more concrete terms.
Charles, who monitors web traffic for indiatimes.com, offered this explana-
tion: “Every Bollywood producer or director or star wants their film to do
well in the NRI market. And they will all tell reporters why their film will be
a hit with NRIs. But each year, only a few films do well abroad. The question
I would ask them is, ‘Do you know your NRI?’”
It is this problem of “knowing the NRI” that dot-com companies offered
to solve by presenting those in the film industry with a range of metrics—
page hits, downloads, subscriptions, number of minutes spent on a page,
and so on—that indicated how well a film was likely to do among NRI audi-
ences, and following that up by tracking films’ overseas earnings. As Omar
Qureshi, waving his hand at the computers in the indiatimes.com office, said
to me, “See, the beauty of the Web is, we can track interest in every article,