ImaginAsian TV

World Screen Weekly, August 24, 2006

CHANNEL: ImaginAsian TV (iaTV), U.S.

LAUNCH DATE: August 2004

OWNERSHIP: ImaginAsian Entertainment, a privately-owned entity that also operates iaRadio, a cinema in New York named The ImaginAsian—with plans to launch a second theater in Los Angeles next year—and iaLink, an online magazine for the Asian American community.

NUMBER OF SUBSCRIBERS: 4.5 million homes in the U.S.

DISTRIBUTION: Cable and terrestrial.

DESCRIPTION: ImaginAsian TV (iaTV) is a 24-hour network devoted to airing a broad slate of entertainment and factual content from Asia, as well as locally produced programming about Asian-American communities.

CEO, IMAGINASIAN ENTERTAINMENT: Michael Hong

COO: J. Edward Lee

EVP, AFFILIATE SALES &

NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT: Anil Srivatsa

SVP, PROGRAMMING & PRODUCTION: David L. Chu

PROGRAMMING STRATEGY: While iaTV is eager to lure Asian American viewers—one of the fastest-growing demographics in the U.S.—the channel is also keen on promoting what David L. Chu, the senior VP of programming and production, calls “cross-country viewing.” That concept plays into the channel’s scheduling strategy, which has avoided “ethnic blocks” such as afternoons solely devoted to Chinese-American or Korean-American viewers. “We want all of our shows to reach a cross-over audience—whether it’s crossing over to other Asian audiences or really into the mainstream,” Chu says. “If we just had ethnic blocks, you’d find that only the Chinese would tune into that night and maybe the Japanese another night. We really give it a good mix. We look closely at the lead-in and lead-out shows and what makes sense.”

Chu continues, “We do have certain destinations, like a documentary destination, a Korean drama series destination. But we’ll go from a Hong Kong film to a Bollywood drama series into Japanese anime. We really try and promote cross-country viewing.”

About 90 percent of the channel’s content is acquired, Chu says, with its main suppliers being Fortune Star in Hong Kong, Japan’s NHK, MBC and CJ Media in Korea and Vietnam Media Corp.

Among its most popular programming, Chu says, has been anime. “In fact we’re probably the only network that plays anime in language, with subtitles. The hardcore anime fans want to watch the original version. They don’t want to watch the dubbed version.”

Korean drama has also proved to be tremendously popular. The channel recently aired Winter Sonata and is set to soon launch Princess Hours.

According to Chu, the channel often packages its Asian acquired programming with originally produced segments. “We get Asian-American hosts to provide commentary for most of our films, documentaries and drama series,” Chu explains. “For the person who isn’t that familiar with Asian content, it really makes it more accessible for them to tune in to the show. If they missed an episode, we provide commentary on what they missed. For Winter Sonata we actually flew our production team out to Korea and did a deluxe host wrap and it went over with our viewers really well.”

In addition to Korean and Japanese drama series and films from across the region, Chu is now on the lookout for sports programming—“good taekwondo, kung-fu or sumo or Thai boxing”—as well as “zany Japanese game shows.”

The network is looking to boost its original programming slate, following the success of the comedy sketch show Uncle Morty’s Dub Shack, the stand-up series Comedy Zen and the docu-reality series Finding My America. Chu says iaTV is in development on a show about car-tuning culture as well as a short-film series. Further, following the success of the Miss Asia USA Pageant this year, iaTV is hoping to stage the production again next year. “We put a short clip up on YouTube and it got over 150,000 hits, so we’re thinking of now putting that on DVD and about doing it again next year, but really making it a much bigger production.” In addition, Chu is actively seeking co-production partnerships in Asia.

WHAT’S NEW: The next step for iaTV, Chu says, is really bolstering ImaginAsian Entertainment’s position as a truly multimedia company. “We have a number of websites,” Chu says. “The main channel site, the radio site, the theater site, the online magazine. We want to turn that into an Asian portal for content, not only with its own original programming, but also a blogging space and possibly a dating site. We have ambitious plans.”

WEBSITE: www.iatv.tv

—By Mansha Daswani