The Asian Pacific American Experience

Transcription

1 · T H E A S I A N PA C I F I C A M E R I C A N E X P E R I E N C E
January 18, 2007
From the Pages of USA TODAY
ImaginAsian tries to capture
imagination of many groups
W
hen Michael Hong, the 38-year-old CEO of
ImaginAsian Entertainment, was a KoreanAmerican kid growing up [in New York], he’d
catch Asian martial-arts films in Manhattan theaters.
Twenty-five years later, media images of Asians
have evolved from Bruce Lee to Jet Li. Hong hopes
to further broaden the media landscape for Asians
through ImaginAsian, a multimedia start-up that could
be about to hit the big time.
Think of ImaginAsian as a fusion [joining together]
of MTV and Black Entertainment Television in their
early days. But rather than court only music fans or
one ethnic group, ImaginAsian is using many media
platforms to target a growing U.S. audience of all ethnicities who like Asian-themed films and home videos, cable TV shows, music and Internet content.
Among ImaginAsian’s more popular offerings:
Japanese anime cartoons such as Hikaru No Go; Korean-produced soap operas; Bollywood movies from
India’s prolific film industry; Asian cooking, health
and fitness shows; and original shows, including Uncle
Morty’s Dub Shack, a sitcom featuring the exploits of
funky Asian-American rappers.
ImaginAsian hasn’t turned a profit yet and faces
tough competition from No. 1 cable operator Comcast’s AZN Television, MTV and others that offer Asian
media content. But the start-up, which launched in
2003 with four employees in a warehouse in Ridgefield, N.J., seems to be gaining momentum.
In recent months, ImaginAsian has struck carriage
deals with Time Warner, Charter Communications and
other cable operators in New York, California, New Jersey, Texas and Hawaii. It reaches 5 million households
and hopes to double that number this year. Advertisers such as Wal-Mart, Ford, Toyota Motor, Citibank and
™
Sony Pictures have signed on. And ImaginAsian executives say several more major deals are in the works
with U.S. and Asian media and entertainment firms.
“No one would even take meetings with us in the
beginning,” says Hong, a former Nielsen Media Research executive whose immigrant mother raised him
in rough neighborhoods in Queens. “Now, we have a
lot of options.”
Coveted market
ImaginAsian is tapping into the growing mainstream interest in recent years in things Asian, from
the popular Iron Chef cooking show to action films and
dramas such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and
Memoirs of a Geisha.
Corporations covet the emerging crossover market of Asian-American, immigrant and white consumers—from their teens to their 30s—who are embracing the globalization of the media, products and
technology.
Henry Jenkins, co-director of MIT’s Comparative
Media Studies program and author of Convergence
Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, calls it “pop
cosmopolitanism,” or the emergence of a new cosmopolitanism [comfort in many countries] that revolves
around popular culture.
“At one time, the wisdom was that Asian content
needed to be westernized to appeal to the West,” Jenkins writes in an e-mail interview.
“But now, kids are seeking out the most Asian of
content because it does not look and feel like American-made media.”
Corporate advertisers used to ignore the small numbers of Asian-American consumers, says CEO Bill Imada
of the IW Group, a marketing firm in Los Angeles.
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But . . . today, businesses the world over are aiming
at that demographic group.
No wonder. The 14 million Asian-Americans in
the USA boast a median household income in 2004
of $58,000—the highest of all ethnic groups. Their
spending power will grow from $427 billion today to
$623 billion by 2010, projects the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth.
“There’s critical mass now,” Imada says.
Phil Yu, a 28-year-old film school graduate of the
University of Southern California and author of a blog
on Asian-American media issues (www.AngryAsianMan.com), says ImaginAsian offers films and TV shows
that reflect his life as a young Korean-American.
“It’s good to see programming that represents us,
and not only the white mainstream pop culture,” Yu
says.
While ImaginAsian’s early fans were mostly AsianAmerican, today more than 60 percent of its audience
is white and other ethnicities, executives say.
ImaginAsian has sought a broad market ever since
its co-founding by Hong; his brother, Augustine Hong;
former Comcast manager Neal Chung; and New Jersey
businessman Bobby Choe.
Augustine Hong, a money manager and co-founder
of Botree Investments and Princeton Advisory Group,
is chairman and the largest shareholder of ImaginAsian. He ponied up [provided] most of ImaginAsian’s
$300,000 in seed money.
“I asked Michael to study this business model,” Augustine Hong says. “He said, ‘Bro, we can do this, but
it won’t be easy, and we have to move quickly.’ Somehow, he’s managed to keep it alive and growing.”
The Hong brothers sold several more private investors on ImaginAsian’s potential. They say it costs $50
million to $200 million to start a media firm, and so
far, ImaginAsian has spent “tens of millions of dollars”
to get rolling.
Today, ImaginAsian’s 50 employees work in the
company’s offices and production space in a midtown
Manhattan high-rise, a short walk from Rockefeller
Center.
ImaginAsian’s main revenue [earnings] comes from
advertising. But Michael Hong says the firm enjoys
strong year-to-year growth in film distribution, DVD
sales and ticket sales from its New York movie theater
™
and a new Los Angeles theater opening this year. ImaginAsian also may garner [gather] future revenue from
broadband video offered on its website.
Edward Lee, ImaginAsian’s chief operating officer
and co-founder of cable TV technology firm Worldgate
Communications, says ImaginAsian will be profitable
in 2008 “if it continues to establish its brand name and
gain wider distribution of content.”
A big tent
In building ImaginAsian, Michael Hong didn’t want
to only air Asian-language films and shows—which
others already were doing. Nor did he want to copy
Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo
and cater to one ethnic group.
“We want a ‘big tent’ approach,” Hong says. “We
want to be accessible to all Asians and non-Asians.”
To that end, ImaginAsian offers IATV, a 24-hour national network devoted to Asian-American topics; the
ImaginAsian movie theater in New York; ImaginAsian
Radio, a weekly radio show featuring Asian-American
music and news; and IALink, a website for Asian issues.
This year and next, ImaginAsian will release 25
feature films and home videos, including Journey from
the Fall, an acclaimed drama by young filmmaker Ham
Tran about the fate of a Vietnamese family after the fall
of Saigon.
The Hongs say they are working on several content
and distribution deals with large media and entertainment companies in Korea, China, Japan, India and the
USA. They would not disclose details or the names of
potential partners, saying only that deals would be announced in the near future.
“Asian-Americans are an unbelievably dynamic demographic,” [AZT Television vice president Bill] Georges says. “They deserve content targeted to them.”
Michael Hong says ImaginAsian’s edge comes as a
“one-stop shop in the Asian space” that offers content,
advertising, cable TV, theaters and home entertainment distribution.
ImaginAsian’s bicultural experience and contacts
overseas also are a big strength.
“We not only know the market, but live it,” he says.
Hong has come a long way from Queens where, as
an 11-year-old, he stacked heavy Sunday newspapers
for news vendors.
After studying philosophy at the State University of
New York in Binghamton, Hong dropped out of college
to hunt for a filmmaking job.
Hong ended up working at Paramount, Spelling
Entertainment and Nielsen Media Research in sales,
marketing and distribution.
Now, Hong—divorced with two young daughters—
™
wants ImaginAsian to be “the media center of everything that’s Asian-inspired” for the next generation of
cross-cultural audiences.
Says Hong: “We’re taking this market and Asian
content to a whole new level.”
—Edward Iwata

The Asian Pacific American Experience

Transcription

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