Niharika Desai Tim Kash

It's the moment that millions of American South Asians have been waiting for. The delivery of an eagerly awaited present promised as far back as last year.

Ok, so we exaggerate a bit. At 9pm Eastern Time last night, 2am BST, US based MTV Networks launched its latest offering - MTV Desi, a new channel serving young South Asians in America.

Plans for the channel were announced late last year and since then internet blogs by Americans Indians have been abuzz with news and speculation. A concerted PR campaign has so far seen huge articles in the New York Times and this week's Time magazine.

Announcing the launch of their newest network, MTV president Christina Norman said yesterday: "Young Americans are increasingly diverse, multi-ethnic, and cross- cultural - they demand entertainment that caters to their individual backgrounds. MTV Desi is the first of many MTV World networks that will serve these growing niche youth audiences with customized programming tailored specifically to their life experiences."

The Viacom owned music television company is planning two more offerings - MTV Chi for Chinese American and MTV K for Korean Americans. Both will be launched later this year.

"MTV Desi will be the pop culture destination for Desis and shine a light on the young South-Asian American experience," said Nusrat Durrani, the man who will oversee Desi and the other two.

"[It] will be a platform for artists from these communities as well as those who want to reach it, and bring fresh new influences into the American pop-culture mainstream. Young South-Asians in the US will finally be able to see themselves on television. For MTV this is a historic opportunity."

To front this historic opportunity are two VJs: London's Tim Kash and Brooklyn's Niharika Desai. The former, MTV's youngest VJ when he was first signed up, presents the daily MTV News show, and briefly also presented BBC1 Top of the Pops. More recently he has fronted a series of documentaries on the Asian tsunami and co-hosted coverage of Hyde Park's Live8 gig for MTV.

27 year old Niharika Desai, a NYC based editor of TV programmes and a Philosophy/south Asian regional studies graduate from University of Pennsylvania, had previously been working behind the scenes on documentaries for five years. One blogger has half-jokingly predicted she will eventually become the most famous US-born South Asian.

During the interview, according to the NYT, she told Durrani: "My parents didn't raise me watching Hindi films and what not. So I implore you, please do something more than Bollywood. Don't get me wrong. I love Bollywood. But desi kids in America would so benefit from having a cool influence and learning hip stuff, too, like M.I.A.."

And it seems London rapper M.I.A., currently the hottest upcoming British talent in US hip-hop, will not be our only export. Jay Sean and Raghav were both touring the country recently and have recorded sound-bytes for the station. MTV Desi has also been in London sourcing content and forging links with music artists.

Initially, it is likely that most of the music videos (except Bollywood) will be of British origin until American artists get used to making their own. The regular shows will be a mixture of original programming based in America and feeds from MTV India.

Last night however, the station opted to start off with the singing talents of sufi-rock singer Rabbi Shergill.