From: chenh@neptune.ecs.csus.edu (H. Philip Chen)
Subject: Re: A hot market (was: History of family name)
Organization: California State University, Sacramento
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 92 10:33:21 GMT

hiebeler@think.com (Dave Hiebeler) writes:
>john@jho.com (John Ho) writes:
>
>>    P.S. After the new Census in 1990, the Asian American has became a
>> 	   very hot market to marketers.  AT&T, MCI and United
>> 	   Airlines, etc. are spending big bucks to advertize in the
>> 	   Asian market.

>  Why is it suddenly a hot market?  Didn't anyone know how many AA's
>there were before the 1990 census?
>
>  The other day I did notice an AT&T commercial showing a couple of AA
>women talking (no AA men, of course) mixed in with the various clips.
>It did not seem to be a commercial about international rates, either
>(a few years ago, they ran some commercials showing people speaking in
>Chinese, as well as many other languages, for some international rates
>of theirs).

=====

AT&T, MCI, PacBell, PG&E, BofA, along of some other major companies,
do have ads in various ethnic languages -- these ads have ethnic people/
voices and also the appropriate characters/words on the screen; all 
professionally and tastefully done.  These ads can be found on ethnic 
channels such as KTSF26 (Bay Area).

Some others companies, eg. Men's Wearhouse (suit store chain), Lucky's 
(mainstream grocery chain), etc. have their normal ads {the same one on 
other channels with Caucasian people & in English} but they're subtitled 
in Chinese or etc ethnic characters/words.  Those ads can be found on the 
ethnic channel too.  Even though these ads are kinda strange (IMO) when 
sandwiched between the other ethnic ads, I'd still give them a lot of 
credit for acknowledging our presence and trying to capture our attention.

Yes, we are not as transparent as some might think.  Some other companies
just run their all-American ads on this ethnic channel, and I don't mind 
that either -- have to give them credit too.


Anyway, talking about KTSF26, my local cable company - Sacramento Cable -
decided to remove this KTSF and replace it with ITC (Int'l Channel, based 
in LA; multi-ethnic channel) beginning this August.  The local paper 
reported that 2200 people jammed the phone lines at that TV station (KTSF) 
and were concerned about the removal.

I bet that somebody at Sacto Cable must have told the company/exec meeting
that "they (the Asians, etc) wouldn't complain [...]" (Go figure.)


This cable company also got bombarded with protests.  The local papers did 
a few articles on this subject.  Yes, the Asian community here were/are 
very concerned with all this.  The word "outraged" may be appropriate.
The papers interviewed various Asian "leaders" here; each basically gave 
the same opinion, along with some other reasons, suggestions, etc.
The bottom line was NO Asian person/society/group was approached before
this change was announced.  It came as a surprise to many.  (Somebody even 
cried racism, trying to dilute the Asian community, etc.)

This must be one of the few times that I hear people from various Asian
ethnicities and races agree on the same issue.  (And it has to do with TV!?!)


I was among the subscribers who dialed the cable company and gave them my 
views; in a pleasant way.  It was basically "I like it the same way it is --
don't drop that channel".  The admin person and I talk about it for over 
10 minutes.  She gave some reasons which I felt was "not good enough", eg. 
she said that there're too much infomercial (aka junk programs) at night 
on that channel;  I told her that's the same as some other stations too; 
so that shouldn't be an important reason.  I even suggested giving the
subscribers *both* the channels; plus etc discussions happened.  While at 
it, I answered her questions (the survey kind), and she also answered 
some of mine regarding the said issue.  She was quite pleasant too.


Anyway, the cable company seems to be in the "damage control" mode.  They
hired/appointed someone to handle the "Asian affairs". They also set aside
a new/unused channel to inform subscribers about this change, and also to 
show some video-clips on programs to expect from the replacement channel.
(The message is repeated continuously; 24 hrs a day, I believe.)

They even claim that they're working with ITC "to bring viewers the programs
that they (we) want" (paraphrased).  Somehow I don't believe that's gonna 
happen.  Methinks that they'll just broadcast the same programs that ITC 
provides the other cable companies.



Surprise #1:  Phil also watches the Asian channel.
Disclaimer:   What is more amazing is Phil the milk-drinking, beer-guzzling
                and bloody-red-meat-eating twinkie can't understand over
                half the things that're going-on, on that channel.   1/2 :-)

Surprise #2:  Phil actually called in and gave his opinions.
Disclaimer:   No biggie.  I just decided that nobody's gonna take away a
                channel that's related to Asian.people that easily.


This post makes me sound like I don't like changes.  Not necessarily true.
Anyway, they're quite certain on their decision to drop KTSF, but I still
hope that they'll reconsider it.


All of this started about 2 weeks back,  I'll post if anything new or 
different happens.



-phil

Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american