ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the production of this "real and imagined shared cultural space" by focusing attention on one of the most visible and compelling sites of mediation between India and the diaspora: Bollywood. It focuses on the role played by diasporic media entrepreneurs in shaping Bollywood's transnational circulation. Diasporic media companies have historically operated as small-scale and often, though not always, family-run enterprises. Tracing how this has changed since the mid-2000s, the chapter examines two highly publicized diasporic media initiatives—MTV Desi, a television channel that sought to target South Asian-American youth but only lasted eighteen months, and Saavn.com, a New York-based digital media company that has emerged as the most prominent aggregator and distributor of Bollywood content in North America. In contrast to Bollywood during the 1990s, Tamil and Telugu cinema did not address diasporic communities or wrestle with the issue of reterritorializing diasporic Indians.
