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programming, analyzing this moment of “failure” is crucial, for it brings
into sharp relief the challenges facing media professionals in imagining dia-
22
sporic audiences. In this case, it also encourages us to reflect on the limits
of television as a site for the articulation of Bollywood with contemporary
diasporic youth culture.

The Limits of Niche Television
Nusrat Durrani, who was largely responsible for developing the MTV-World
initiative, understood very well that the relationship between “diaspora” and
“home” was much more ambivalent for Desi youth compared to their par-
ents’ generation, and that MTV-Desi could not succeed by mimicking MTV-
India or other Indian television channels. Born and raised in north India,
Durrani had worked for a decade in India and Dubai before moving to the
United States and joining MTV in the early 1990s. Indeed, his background
as a media professional of South Asian origin who had lived and worked
in India and Dubai before moving to the United States, and whose taste in
music and popular culture had been shaped by transnational circuits of cul-
tural flows that were not limited to the Anglo American cultural sphere that
his colleagues at MTV were steeped in, seems to have played a key role in
shaping his approach to the MTV-Desi initiative. Recalling his early years as
a junior executive at MTV, Durrani reflected on the music channel’s narrow
programming outlook as something that came as a surprise to him. He went
on to narrate one particular incident as he tried to explain to me how his
early experience at MTV spurred him to think beyond established industry
paradigms when it came to MTV-Desi:

ND: Disappointed might be a strong word. I think I was surprised. I was
surprised that people in New York City, particularly in the entertain-
ment side of things, just didn’t know and weren’t exposed to what else
was happening around the world. They had no concept of Bollywood,
for example, they had no concept of any entertainment icon outside of
what was kind of, you know, almost endorsed by the U.S. media, and
those things really bothered me for some time. I recall an incident,
I think it was in ’97 . . . in those days by the way, MTV or the enter-
tainment industry, generally speaking, didn’t have too many South
Asians. . . . So maybe that’s part of the reason, maybe I was the only
dude, sort of, trying to tell people stuff. Anyhow, do you remember this
band called Cornershop?
AP: Yes, I do.