News of the World, Vietnamese-Style : Community Spirit Propels TV Show

The studio for “Truyen Hinh Vietnam,” Southern California’s only all-news television program in Vietnamese, is, in the producer’s own words, “simple.”

Some might be less charitable.

The walls cry out for a new coat of paint, equipment bins are dusty and studio execs--there are only two--give directions in Vietnamese as they stand on a patchwork of carpeting covering a concrete floor.

But the broadcasting spirit is alive here--especially for this program.

“Truyen Hinh Vietnam,” which means “Vietnamese News Station” in English, has a larger viewing audience than any other Vietnamese-language news program in the United States, according to those responsible for producing it. The 60-minute program appears at 8:30 a.m. Saturdays on KSCI, Channel 18, which is licensed in San Bernardino but available by cable or UHF in most of Southern California.

From Ventura to Mexico

KSCI’s signal reaches an audience stretching from Ventura County to the Mexican border, an area with more than 1 million ethnic Asians--including Orange County’s Vietnamese community of about 100,000.

The news program is short on money, and there are no go-fers streaking for coffee and no directors in satiny shirts yelling, “Makeup! Makeup!”

“We even get our own water,” joked Sang Van Nguyen, an announcer who works full time as a McDonnell Douglas research engineer in Long Beach. “All of us have full-time jobs elsewhere. We get paid here, but it’s very little.”

Said Kim Lan Nguyen, a beauty contest winner who reads entertainment and local news: “This job isn’t about making money. It’s about helping our community.”

The no-frills studio is tucked away inside the Westminster editorial offices of the Nguoi Viet Daily Newspaper, the largest Vietnamese-language newspaper in Orange County’s Little Saigon area. In the past 6 years, it has grown from a two-person operation into a 10-member organization with visions of becoming one of the first, if not the first, major Vietnamese-American film companies, said Ty Van Luong, 56, the show’s originator.

“Our concentration is now on news, but there are plans to add entertainment and open up other shows, possibly, to tape a (Vietnamese-language) sitcom. The only things holding us back now are money and lack of equipment,” said Luong, who helps produce and direct the news show.

Also under consideration is a joint agreement with Vietnamese-language television producers in San Jose to produce and market news programming for other Southeast Asian communities around the country.

“Truyen Hinh Vietnam,” which features three anchors, has been taped every Wednesday night for the past 6 years.

It has become a pet project for both Luong and his partner, Yen Do, Nguoi Viet’s publisher. Both are Vietnamese refugees who fled South Vietnam after the Communists took Saigon in 1975. They arrived in Orange County’s Little Saigon without much knowledge of Western culture or the English language.

“In the beginning, we would go out and ask people to place a commercial on our program. Now they come to us,” Luong said. Air time sells for up to $400 a minute.

“It’s taken years to get where we are now,” he said. “We don’t make that much money on the show, but what profit we do make goes back into buying equipment.”

Joint-Ownership Agreement

When the show started, Luong and Do handled the news gathering, announcing, editing and advertising. In 1984, they entered into a joint-ownership agreement and Luong moved his cameras into Do’s editorial offices.

“From the beginning, I was very confident that a television show would find a lot of support among the Vietnamese community,” Luong said. “Most Vietnamese are working a lot and don’t have a lot of time to spend reading a newspaper. So they rely on their news from TV.”

Years ago, Luong said, he understood that any successful Vietnamese-language news format would have to concentrate heavily on foreign news, especially on Pacific Rim and Southeast Asian countries.

The program recycles many stories from the Nguoi Viet newspaper, which carries a healthy menu of foreign news. But Le Dinh Dieu, Nguoi Viet’s executive editor, said the program also relies on newspapers from Hong Kong and Thailand and has correspondents in Southeast Asia. The program also relies on viewer mail, especially from relatives in refugee camps worldwide, Dieu said.

In the past year, the program has featured elected officials and prominent Orange County residents whose influence affects the Vietnamese community. Interview subjects have included Gov. George Deukmejian, Westminster Mayor Charles V. Smith and Cal State Fullerton President Jewel Plummer Cobb.

For the most part, the show’s format is simple. Three announcers sit and read the news. Each Wednesday evening they arrive a few minutes early to familiarize themselves with that week’s show. A tight budget means no TelePrompTer to assist them.

“We run stuff you don’t normally see on CBS, NBC or ABC. We carry lots of news outside the United States,” news reader Sang Van Nguyen said.

Nguyen, 38, is typical of the news staff. His rich, deep voice and handsome features won him the announcing job at “Truyen Hinh,” and he also does voice-over work for commercials at KSCI.

Job Selling TV Sets

Luong also has another calling during the day. He sells TV sets at his electronics store in Little Saigon.

The show’s news director is Dat Mai Hoang, 26, a Pennsylvania State University graduate who studied art and film making. By day, Hoang works as a full-time member of the Nguoi Viet Daily Newspaper staff.

Hoang, a budding scriptwriter, volunteered last April to join the program’s staff after he heard that it needed someone to gather news during the day. Some lessons came with the job, he said, referring to one particularly controversial news segment on Vietnam.

“It was about politics,” said Hoang, who had to ask a veteran staffer for advice. “He told me that the political nature of the news might have been controversial, and we would have been in hot water. He advised me to tone it down. Ever since then, I’ve kept it right in the middle.”

And with good reason. The Southeast Asian exile community remains very emotional about the Communist takeover of Vietnam.

A Welcome Beacon

Thuy Huong, who is also known as Janet Tran, one of the three anchors on “Truyen Hinh,” was an announcer on a similar news program in Saigon before the city fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975. Her face is a welcome beacon for hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees who have vivid memories of their homeland.

“None of us do this for the money,” she said.

In fact, Luong said, the three announcers are paid only $10 to $15 an hour.

Said Kim Lan Nguyen: “We all know that taping this show takes a lot of our time, but we do it because we want to. It isn’t the money, because what we make is very little. We care for our community and want to help our people learn about the different things that go on in the world.”