Southland Airwaves Speak to Booming Chinese Population

A picture of a satellite spiraled across a television screen as anchor David Huang straightened in his seat in a Rosemead studio, preparing to greet Chinese-speaking viewers all over North America with the latest world news.

Delivered by satellite to audiences in the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean, his half-hour broadcast is designed as a cornerstone of N. A. Television Corp., the latest newcomer in Southern California’s competitive Chinese-language broadcast industry.

On the same day that N. A. Television made its debut last week, a new Chinese-language radio station called Voice of Democracy also joined the airwaves.

Station owner Shi Chang Chen said he has been planning to start a radio station for two years. After the June military crackdown in Beijing, he decided to name his station Voice of Democracy as a way of continuing the spirit of the protesters.

Based in South Pasadena, the station broadcasts on an FM subcarrier frequency. To receive its programs, listeners must buy a special radio that the station sells for $40.

Both of the new broadcast companies hope to carve out a slice of Southern California’s growing Chinese market, estimated at more than 200,000 people.

The total could be as high as 500,000, said Rosemary Fincher Danon, general manager of Los Angeles-based KSCI-TV Channel 18, the independent station that leases air time to six local Chinese television broadcast companies. The station also leases time for programs in 15 other languages, from Italian to Farsi.

Counting the latest entries in the Chinese broadcast industry, there are nine Chinese-language television companies and four radio stations in Los Angeles alone. Many offer service programs, such as English lessons and immigration information.

With the exception of Chinese Outreach, a nonprofit, Christian radio programming group that airs no commercials during its 2-hour weekly program, all of the broadcast firms hope to attract advertisers, who are increasingly interested in reaching Chinese consumers.

“Advertisers are starting to realize the strength of this market,” Danon said, citing the Bank of America, Alpha Beta supermarkets and the California Lottery as examples.

But Irene Young, general manager of Joint Art Media Corp., an Alhambra advertising firm, said she is still reluctant to recommend that her clients advertise on Chinese-language television or radio programs. She suggests instead that most of them advertise in Chinese-language newspapers, which reach about 60% of the Chinese community, she said. In comparison, Chinese broadcast programs generally reach, at best, 35% of the community.

For clients who want to reach the elderly and housewives, however, Young said that television and radio may work well. Those two groups of viewers often watch Chinese-language television, now available on Channel 18 from noon to 3 p.m. and other time slots scattered through the day and night, she said.

In the competitive Chinese-language television market, N. A. Television is the first to utilize satellite transmission, enabling it to reach audiences outside of metropolitan areas, said Jesse Hsiao, secretary of the board.

But unlike programs on Channel 18, which viewers from Ventura to San Diego counties can watch free, the satellite programs can only be received through a miniature satellite dish and special receiver that together sell for $499. The dish weighs barely 25 pounds and is no wider than a card table.

Dubbed “Little Ear,” the dish is popular in Taiwan, where it gained acceptance during the 1988 Olympics. Viewers wanting more complete coverage of the games used them to receive Japanese television coverage from Seoul.

Including tax, shipping and installation, viewers would incur a one-time cost of $600 to $700 for the satellite service, said Sandy Hsueh, a spokeswoman for North America Telecommunication Corp., a Rosemead company that works with satellite dish distributors.

By turning a dial, “Little Ear” viewers can hear programs in either Cantonese or Mandarin Chinese.

But Channel 18’s Danon said she does not feel threatened by competition from the satellite television company. She said that paid Chinese-language programs, such as those offered on Choice Cable’s Jade channel, have never hurt business for producers who air Chinese programs on her station.

“Free over-the-air programming is always going to have its place,” she said.

Still in a “test broadcasting” period, during which it offers just 2 hours of programming a night, N. A. Television is trying to iron out glitches in its programs before its formal launch in January, 1990. In addition to soap operas and variety shows produced in Hong Kong or Taiwan, the company will offer locally produced news and “magazine style” shows, and is in the process of fine-tuning those programs.

The first magazine show to air last week introduced viewers to Muscle Beach and dancing skaters in Venice. News broadcasts feature CNN clips and film reports flown in from Taiwan, China and Hong Kong.

Hsiao said the company is trying to speed up its news service even more in order to satisfy viewer demand for up-to-date information.

Competition among the Chinese-language broadcast stations centers on the news programs because that’s what most viewers and listeners, especially those who cannot understand English-language news, want.

With that in mind, Voice of Democracy is emphasizing speedy news coverage by having correspondents in Hong Kong and Taiwan call in at least twice a day with breaking news. Other reports are sent by facsimile machine and are read by news announcers at the South Pasadena studio.

“It makes me feel like I’m reporting breaking news,” said Perry Ni, a popular television personality from Taiwan who works as a disc jockey and talk show host at Voice of Democracy. He said that at other stations he has worked for, news announcers simply read newspaper reports, which most listeners probably had read.