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The home page of EthnikPR, one of many companies that have constructed the “South
Asian consumer” demographic in North America.

Ice and a countdown program called MTV 123—and did little to distinguish
MTV-Desi from the other India-centric channels available through DirecTV
or other satellite and cable systems.
However, MTV-Desi’s failure cannot be explained by focusing on the log-
ics of American television alone. The growing influence of Indian film and
television companies in defining media circulation in the diaspora that I
detailed earlier also played a crucial role in shaping MTV-Desi’s program-
ming, distribution, and reception. It would not be an exaggeration to state
that television in India has undergone major changes since the mid-1990s.
As Shanti Kumar and several other scholars have documented, the establish-
ment of influential transnational networks such as Star TV and translocal
networks such as ZEE, Sun, and Eenadu during the 1990s transformed the
ways in which television operated as a cultural institution. What began
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with local cable operators stringing cables across rooftops to connect homes
to the new and fascinating world of Star Plus, Star Sports, MTV, and BBC
News had, by the mid-1990s, grown into a stable satellite and cable indus-
try with rapidly expanding viewership. Since the late 1990s, these television
companies have invested considerable effort in reaching diasporic audiences
(particularly in North America and Western Europe). As Rajinder Dudrah
points out, taking advantage of the mainstream media’s neglect of Asian
audiences in Britain and Europe, companies like ZEE TV quickly established