TV Talks to Immigrant Markets

When Archana Chaturvedi saw an ad in a local Indian newspaper for Dish Network’s Hindi-language television channels, she practically lunged for the phone to order the satellite service.

The physical therapist and her engineer husband grew up in politically active families in India and are starved for home-country news. The serial dramas, soap operas and music videos offered by the channels have also been a learning tool for the couple’s U.S.-born daughters, who have honed their Hindi from the plush sofa of the family’s hillside Diamond Bar home.

The Chaturvedis may not know it, but their TV-viewing tastes--and those of other immigrants in towns as small as Eau Claire, Wis., and Yuma, Ariz.--are the focus of aggressive competition among satellite and cable providers.

Efforts to woo Latino immigrants--by far the largest segment of foreign-language speakers--have picked up markedly in recent years. But the battle for new subscribers has moved beyond the Latino market, taking aim at the immigrant diaspora.

Fully 14% of U.S. residents--and nearly a third of Californians--spoke a language other than English at home a decade ago, according to the U.S. census, and those numbers are sure to skyrocket when 2000 census data are released. Today’s immigrants are wealthier than ever. They are planting roots in once-homogenous suburban and rural pockets.

And suddenly, they have plenty of television choices.

Bolstered by new technology and a growing awareness of immigrant spending power, satellite and cable operators are realizing that adding one Persian, Mandarin or Tagalog channel can do more to increase subscribers than putting another all-news channel into the mix.

“It’s bringing us customers that we may not have otherwise obtained,” said Michael Kelly, senior vice president for international programming at Littleton, Colo.-based EchoStar Communications Corp.

EchoStar’s Dish Network now offers more than 50 foreign-language channels from countries as varied as Poland and Portugal, along with scattered programming from international pockets including Croatia. Competing DirecTV jumped in last year with its Spanish multichannel package--DirecTV Para Todos--and recently added its first Chinese channel.

The satellite companies have growing capacity and a national footprint that allow them to reach lone immigrants in places as remote as rural Montana. Now, as cable moves to a digital platform, that industry is stepping into the race.

Last year alone, more than 350 cable systems across the country launched international channels--more than in the previous five years combined. Their local focus has enabled them to precisely target pockets of foreign-born consumers and market the new fare at cultural and community events.

“The cable operators are targeting smaller and smaller groups to make sure they don’t lose these customers to” satellite, said Kent Rice, president and chief operating officer of International Channel Networks--also based in Littleton--which markets and distributes most of the international channels to cable systems in the U.S. “What was niche is not niche anymore.”

From the moment EchoStar launched its Dish Network four years ago, the firm saw international programming as a way to set itself apart from DirecTV. In addition to Spanish, first-year launches included Italian, Arabic and Greek channels.

With each new satellite added to EchoStar’s fleet, the tally of channels has mounted, and offerings have grown more nuanced. Dish’s five-channel South Asian package includes programming in Tamil, Gujarati, Urdu and Bengali, and in February it added Bollywood for You, a premiere channel of movies from Bombay, India’s, entertainment hub.

Five channels in Arabic include uncensored debates from Qatar, as well as news, movies and variety fare from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Morocco. Global strife hasn’t hurt. Civil war in the former Yugoslavia prompted the network to introduce programming from Croatia, boosting interest from first-time customers.

Ditto for controversy in Russia last summer over a jailed media mogul who controls a channel there. Dish had just started carrying that channel on its U.S. system, and the outrage over purported censorship attracted Russian immigrants to the service.

EchoStar still trails DirecTV--a unit of El Segundo-based Hughes Electronics Corp.--with 5 million customers to DirecTV’s 9 million. But DirecTV has noticed its competitor’s aggressive immigrant pitch.

Last spring, the company rolled out DirecTV Para Todos, a package of 32 Spanish-language and 210 English-language channels that saw an 87% subscriber increase in the last quarter. And in November, the company announced the launch of Phoenix Satellite Television’s North American Chinese Channel.

Hong Kong-based Phoenix has opened Los Angeles offices and will cater its mix of Mandarin-language programming from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong to U.S. audiences. Phoenix also plans community coverage of Los Angeles and other immigrant hubs.

Phoenix executives unveiled the channel at a Pasadena event. Speaking through a translator, Phoenix Chairman Chang-le Liu recalled his years more than a decade ago living in Monterey Park, known then as “Little Taipei.”

The Chinese community has since spilled over a wide swath of the region, he noted. Immigrants have built sophisticated businesses in finance and international trade, and they hail from the mainland as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan.

“I feel very proud of the contributions of the Chinese in this country,” said the onetime immigrant, who expanded Phoenix Satellite Television Holdings Ltd. from nothing in 1996 to a four-channel network. “I wanted to do something to make their lives a little happier.”

It’s no surprise that DirecTV chose a Chinese channel: EchoStar so far carries none. And Chinese households in the U.S. number 600,000 and--along with their spending power--are growing fastest of all Asian groups. Still, competition is lively. As many as half a dozen Chinese channels can now be viewed in the U.S., through cable or their own rooftop dishes.

Nationwide, satellite subscribers are still scant compared to their cable counterparts. Of 100 million television households, 15 million have mini-dishes, and 1 million more have older, large C-band dishes. That pales in comparison to 70 million cable households.

But mini-dish technology has made all its gains in the last six years alone, and it is increasingly poaching on cable terrain: Initially an alternative for rural residents with no cable choices, satellite now pulls 70% of new subscribers from areas where cable is available, said James Ashurst, a spokesman for the Satellite Broadcasting & Communications Assn.

And in the spirited war for consumers who have access to both, international programming is becoming a critical weapon.

The Chaturvedis once got TV Asia through their cable carrier. But it was pulled. As soon as they spotted the Dish ad, they bailed.

Plenty of others have done the same. A study conducted by Comcast Corp. in 1999 found that about one-half of subscribers leaving for direct broadcast satellite were doing so for more sports or foreign-language programming, with those reasons split about evenly.

Cable operators are scrambling to fill the void. Driving the boom is cable’s transition to digital. Available to satellite providers for longer, the technology enables data to be compressed, leaving more space for channels.

Some systems have negotiated deals for international fare independently. Others, such as Charter Communications’ Armenian and Cambodian channels here, have crafted their own, blending imported and local programming. But most rely on International Channel Networks.

The company--90% owned by Liberty Media Corp.--has distributed the multilingual International Channel for a decade. Two years ago, it added Canales n--Liberty Media’s Spanish multichannel digital tier--and a host of digital single-language channels. Persian, Russian and Japanese last year joined the list of Arabic, Chinese, Italian, Scandinavian, Filipino, South Asian and French offerings.

Adelphia has been among the most aggressive operators to add the channels in recent months. And nowhere do the demographics call for it as much as in the Southland, where this month the company becomes the largest provider with 1.3 million households served.

Several of its Los Angeles-area systems offer the full International Channel Networks menu. And last fall, the company introduced Canales n as Adelphia en Espanol, promoting it through a bilingual ad campaign and marketing at Los Angeles Dodgers games, and at Cinco de Mayo and other festivals. Adelphia is also shopping for more Asian-language channels so it can offer multichannel tiers by year’s end.

Cox Palos Verdes had carried TV Japan for years. But it wasn’t until it switched to a digital format in May that the small system could branch out. It added two Chinese channels and others in Tagalog, Italian and Hindi. Last month, it also launched Cox TeleLatina, a seven-channel Spanish-language package.

As distribution soars on cable and satellite, new channels such as HBO Latino and Home Shopping Network’s Home Shopping en Espanol are being launched. The foreign channels too are increasing efforts to tailor content to immigrants here. TV Russia, for example, promises fare for “professionals and the emerging middle class in the United States.”

Satellite’s strength lies in its coast-to-coast reach. The chances of drawing a critical mass of viewers to live cricket tournaments--a Dish Network delicacy--are good. Cable systems, on the other hand, have much smaller terrain. That means a Polish station in the San Fernando Valley is not likely to pencil out. But it also means systems can satisfy local cravings more precisely. Some larger systems even have the capability to offer Chinese channels in one corner of town, Persian in the other.

Many are studying their demographics for the first time, with some surprising results.

In Colorado Springs, Colo., Adelphia recently rolled out a full foreign-language menu. Driving demand: military veterans with foreign-born wives, along with Indian, Chinese and other immigrants who have flocked to the Silicon Mountain region for jobs at companies such as Intel.

Eau Claire’s cable system recently launched the International Channel to serve its growing Hmong population. And in Yuma, Adelphia introduced TV Japan, among other channels, to serve Japanese employees of Sony and other border maquiladora plants.

The intimate reach of cable also allows for innovative marketing.

In Palos Verdes, Cox is pitching its new choices through profiles of prominent immigrant subscribers on its community channel. The cable companies are turning out to market their wares at events such as Denmark Constitution Day and Filipino Santa Cruzan Day.

The foreign-language channels are pitching in too. The Filipino Channel recently flew Manilan singer Martin Nievera and teen star Jolina Magdangal to San Diego to perform. San Diego’s Cox Communications Inc. launched the channel a little over a year ago.

The bottom-line benefits are new customers. Like the satellite players, cable systems have found that the new channels are luring consumers whose homes were previously cable-free. In San Diego, Cox has penetrated about 35% of the county’s Filipino households, and as many as 15% are new to cable, officials there say.

Overall Latino cable household penetration is about 10% lower than the general market. Canales n is getting a digital box into homes that never had analog cable, and fully half are then signing up for English movie channels too, Rice said.

The cable systems are positioning themselves to pitch the newly loyal customers on high-speed cable modems, telephony, video on demand and interactive TV as they become available.

The channels bind customers to cultures they are eager to maintain.

In the Chaturvedi household, miniature Indian and U.S. flags are crossed in front of a poster commemorating Indian independence.

“I wanted to watch Indian programming because I was just out of touch,” said Archana Chaturvedi, who now follows the same soap operas and religious dramas that her sisters and brother track back home. “I sit there and kind of forget I’m in America. I laugh and enjoy the jokes.”