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Shah: Speaking about the South Asian market, and I’m going to put you
on the spot here. Indian, and South Asian, influence is all over the
map now. In wellness, retail, even clothing. But we don’t see, other
than individual characters appearing on shows, South Asian families
on television. Can you address why this is so? Do you think there is
a chance an Indian family will be on television soon?
Liguori: Frankly, I don’t think the answer I am going to give you will be
popular. I don’t think it’s going to be too far in the future before we
see a South Asian family, an Indian family, portrayed on television.
Let’s start with why there isn’t greater representation. It’s just simply
a numbers game. Right now, there are 2 million South Asians in
this country. And it’s very, very difficult when your job is on the
line, day in and day out, to say that I’m going to put someone in a
show that frankly doesn’t have an audience outside the walls of our
offices.

Liguori’s racialized assumption that only South Asian audiences would be
interested in a television program featuring a South Asian family hardly
merits attention. But it does signal how niche marketing/programming
strategies that have become so well-entrenched in the American media
system over the past two decades intersect with the “discovery” and con-
figuration of ethnic identities as viable marketing segments. The phrase—
“It’s just a numbers game”—and the specific number that Liguori men-
tioned—2 million South Asians—point to the fact that MTV-Desi and
other South Asian media initiatives were working in a context in which
advertising and marketing professionals had succeeded in constructing
Asian Americans as a consumer demographic that remained untapped and
moreover, had unique needs that were unfulfilled by mainstream media
and marketing.
While the intersections of South Asian cultural production and Ameri-
can public culture can be traced through the work of artists like DJ Rekha
and subcultures in cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, media
companies’ interest in this hitherto marginalized community was sparked
in part by the results of the 2000 U.S. census, which revealed that Asian
Americans were the fastest growing ethnic minority as well as the most
affluent of all groups. In much the same way that advertisers and market-
ers worked to commodify Latinos during the mid-to-late 1990s, companies
such as Ethnik PR and Evershine Group took on the task of constructing a
25
Desi demographic. As one widely circulated arcle entitled “Chasing Desi
Dollars” in Time Magazine proclaimed: