KSCI going English (infomercials)

[Eat News 4745]

Asian TV

Asian-Language TV Goodbye: KSCI Goes to English Infomercials After 30 Years

By CRAIG CLOUGH

City News Service

LOS ANGELES (CNS) - The multi-language Asian community will soon be

losing a major TV voice in Los Angeles when economic challenges combine with

high-tech changes to end more than 30 years of local programming on KSCI,

Channel 18.

LA18 will cancel all of its programs in Chinese, Filipino, Spanish and

Armenian, and severely cut back on Korean programming, the station's general

manager confirmed. In place of the canceled programs will primarily be

infomercials in English.

The changes will be implemented beginning July 1 and continue through

late this year or early 2018, said the station's general manager, Dennis Davis.

He declined to offer any one specific reason for the format shift. The station

has been through financial hardships in recent years and filed for bankruptcy

in 2012 while laying off several dozen workers.

At the same time, the federal auction of parts of TV stations' channels

to be reused for cell phone providers raised significant funds but reduced

airwave availability.

``The thing we hate to lose is we do produce local programs for the

Filipinos, Koreans and Chinese and unfortunately we won't be doing that any

longer,'' Davis told City News Service.

As of 2015, Los Angeles County was home to 1,463,000 Asians, more than

any county in the nation, according to a 2016 U.S. Census Bureau report, which

also found that Asians are the fastest growing racial group in the nation.

LA18 was founded in 1977 and broadcasts on 12 digital channels in five

languages -- Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Spanish and Armenian. It airs a mix of

its own programs and shows produced in other countries.

Starting July 1, the station's main channel, 18.1, will cease all Asian-

language programming except for broadcasts in Korean from 8 to 11 p.m. produced

by Seoul Broadcasting Systems out of Korea.

The station's other channels will continue airing their normal

programming after July 1 but will be cut back over the next year from 12

channels to five and eventually only feature Korean programming produced by

international providers.

Popular programs produced by LA18 slated to be canceled on July 1

include ``Tsou LA,'' a program aimed at introducing Chinese speakers to Los

Angeles, and ``Kababayan Today,'' a Filipino-language talk show.

The station's two local news shows in Chinese and Korean will also be

ending July 1, as will its Chinese talk show ``Juliett,'' although Dennis said

SBS planned to continue to produce its own local news program in Korean.

Davis said he has been in talks with other stations interested in

continuing to produce some of the local shows, including ``Kababayan Today,''

which bills itself as the only Filipino language talk show produced in North

America.

One reason for the changes is the station's recent channel-sharing

agreement it inked with PBS SoCal's KOCE-TV, which earned the public station

$49 million earlier this year by auctioning off some of its spectrum to the

FCC.

KSCI earned $89 million under the new arrangement, according to Variety.

As part of the agreement, KOCE will take over seven of KSCI's digital

channels sometime later this year or early next year, Davis said.

``The real reason we changed is the spectrum auction is going to take

effect at the end of this year. We are just looking to adjust our format before

this takes place,'' Davis said.

Davis said it was up to KOCE as to when it wanted to take over the

channels, but the result would be the eventual ending of all programming in non-

English except for Korean.

``We used to be an Asian language station for 30 to 40 years and we are

changing our format now. We will still have a little Korean though,'' Davis

said.

The changes at KSCI are coming while the Asian population in Los Angeles

County continues to grow. The Greater L.A. area contains the largest number

of ethnic Koreans living outside of Korea and the largest number of ethnic

Filipinos living outside of the Philippines.

 

CNS-06-22-2017 02:32