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distribution partners—cable or satellite companies. And you know, there
was pressure from our linear TV partners, so we partnered with them and
launched the channels as premium TV services, and, you know, everybody
loved the idea. They said, let’s align ourselves to the model that exists, you
know, the premium TV model, where there is enough hunger within these
audiences to actually pay a premium to get the channel.

Even though Durrani and others at MTV-Desi recognized that it would
be a mistake to imagine Desi youth and their engagement with media and
popular culture in the same terms as their parents or, generally speak-
ing, as first-generation migrants from the Indian subcontinent, statements
from others at MTV Networks revealed that this was how Desi identity
continued to be mobilized. A particularly telling press release from MTV
described the entire MTV World initiative as an attempt to “tap into the
rich transcultural nature of the target audiences in a manner that uniquely
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connects local audiences to their homeland” (my emphasis). Statements
from other industry executives also revealed how this advertising/mar-
keting discourse positioned Desi youth outside the boundaries of Ameri-
can national culture, rehearsing the contradictory nature of American
responses to Asian immigration that has tended to position “Asians ‘within’
the U.S nation-state, its workplaces, and its market, yet linguistically, cul-
turally, and racially marked Asians as ‘foreign’ and ‘outside’ the national
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polity.” This understanding of Desi identity also held implications for how
industry professionals thought about the interest that South Asian media
might attract from audiences at large.
Consider this exchange that took place during the opening keynote ses-
sion of the SAMMA-Summit in 2008. Peter Liguori, who was the chair-
man of Fox Broadcasting at the time, delivered a keynote address replete
with banal industry catch phrases (such as “content will be king”) and did
not in any way speak to the interests of a convention on South Asian media
and marketing in the United States. But the convention organizers seemed
to have anticipated this. SAMMA cofounder and moderator for the session,
Rajan Shah, opened the question and answer session by directing Liguori’s
attention to the lack of South Asia-themed television programming in the
United States. Even before the applause to Liguori’s keynote speech had
ended, the lights in the hall dimmed and Shah drew everyone’s attention to
a clip from a FOX reality TV program called So You Think You Can Dance.
During the 2008 season, one of the groups on the program had choreo-
graphed a dance to a Bhangra song. Shah posed his question, to loud cheers
from the audience: