By To-wen Tseng, Examiner.com
KSCI-TV, Los Angeles’s Asian-language station, dumped its Vietnamese programming and Mandarin morning news programming by the end of last year, and then entered into Chapter 11 bankruptcy this January.
KSCI was once America’s largest Asian-language TV station, broadcasting to 5.9 million TV households in great Los Angeles and San Diego area. But the Internet TV boom seems to stress the station. Asian-language speaking audience is switching to Web TV for high quality news and variety shows produced in Asia. As an independent local station, KSCI lacks financial ability to compete against those Asian media giants, who are now vigorously attract Asian American audience through Internet TV. Audienceship decline led to advertising decline, and eventually bankruptcy.
Ethnic media being challenged is old news. During the past five years, ASIANWEEK, San Francisco’s English-language weekly for Asian American, dumped its print editions. Ming Pao Daily in New York shut down entirely, while Hoy New York abandoned print.
With the ever-deepening cuts across the news business, and the boom in sales of Internet-connected TVs leading to an over-stressed broadband network across the country, these losses may seem worth no more than a shrug. KSCI, after all, employs no more than 50 staffers. But with their ability to tap into the communities they serve, the ethnic media contribute context and perspectives found nowhere else. The harm of losing ethnic media can go deep.
KSCI-TV, Los Angeles’s Asian-language station, dumped its Vietnamese programming and Mandarin morning news programming by the end of last year, and then entered into Chapter 11 bankruptcy this January.
KSCI was once America’s largest Asian-language TV station, broadcasting to 5.9 million TV households in great Los Angeles and San Diego area. But the Internet TV boom seems to stress the station. Asian-language speaking audience is switching to Web TV for high quality news and variety shows produced in Asia. As an independent local station, KSCI lacks financial ability to compete against those Asian media giants, who are now vigorously attract Asian American audience through Internet TV. Audienceship decline led to advertising decline, and eventually bankruptcy.
Ethnic media being challenged is old news. During the past five years, ASIANWEEK, San Francisco’s English-language weekly for Asian American, dumped its print editions. Ming Pao Daily in New York shut down entirely, while Hoy New York abandoned print.
With the ever-deepening cuts across the news business, and the boom in sales of Internet-connected TVs leading to an over-stressed broadband network across the country, these losses may seem worth no more than a shrug. KSCI, after all, employs no more than 50 staffers. But with their ability to tap into the communities they serve, the ethnic media contribute context and perspectives found nowhere else. The harm of losing ethnic media can go deep.
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