They Want Their ‘M’ TV (Multiethnic, multilingual) : With Nearly Half of the County’s 8.9 Million Residents Speaking a Language Other Than English at Home, KMET-TV Channel 38 Is Finding an Audience With Its Smorgasbord of Programming.
With her eyes glued to her 32-inch Mitsubishi TV, Eun Jeong begins to sing a Korean love song, using her telephone as a microphone.
“Eee ma-um tashi yogi-eh,” Jeong croons, which means, “My heart is again here for you.”
Although it seems Jeong is simply singing along with one of her favorite music videos, her voice is being broadcast over the television. She is live on the air.
The 38-year-old Koreatown resident said it was the fourth time she has participated on “The Interactive Karaoke Show.” This time, Jeong received Korean pastries and skin care products for her efforts--a prize she sneered at and offered to give away.
“I watch the show every day,” said Jeong, who practices at home with a laser karaoke machine. “Sometimes, I feel shy. But sometimes, I don’t.”
“The Interactive Karaoke Show” is one of several unique programs on KMET-TV Channel 38, Los Angeles’ newest television station specializing in multiethnic and multilingual programs. Despite an already jammed local television market, KMET’s arrival has come at a time when about half of Los Angeles County’s 8.9 million residents speak a language other than English at home, according to the 1990 U. S. Census.
“I think it’s extremely healthy for the public,” said Joe Saltzman, a journalism professor at USC who teaches broadcasting. “What’s nice about this concept is that you don’t need a million viewers. You are only trying to target a small audience.”
KMET went on the air in May, after waiting the typical 10 years to receive a license from the Federal Communications Commission. The station, which is owned by Venture Technologies Growth Inc. of Calabasas, is likely to be the last station to be licensed in Los Angeles County because of the lack of available frequencies.
Broadcasting from the Television Center studios in Hollywood, KMET offers programs in English, Italian, German, Russian, Spanish, Korean, French and Hindi and soon will be adding shows in Japanese and Tagalog. It is also the only local station with African and Salvadoran programs.
General manager Charles Lohr said KMET’s goal is to offer Southern California’s diverse population multilingual shows, preferably ones not being offered on other stations.
“For instance, we don’t want to concentrate on Mexican programming because that’s being done already,’ Lohr said. “We want to concentrate on Central American programming because that’s not being done.”
“The Interactive Karaoke Show,” which airs weeknights at 6, is produced by Korean American Television and broadcast on Los Angeles’ Continental Cable’s Channel 52, as well as on Channel 38.
Jung Kim, one of the show’s hosts, said the show never has a dearth of willing participants. Although most callers request Korean songs, viewers also can choose from a selection of English, Spanish and Chinese songs.
Han Pil Lee, the other host of the show, said people from South Korea love to sing because it’s one of the few forms of entertainment they had in their homeland.
“Most entertainment was reserved for the elite class,” Lee said. “There’s no football or baseball, so singing is one of the few things you can do to have fun.”
Unlike other stations, KMET does not pay for most of its shows. Although some of its independent producers run commercials to offset costs, most producers use their own money to pay for production fees.
“The station is going to have to rely on people in the community who have a message and are willing to pay for it to go on air,” Saltzman said. “It takes lots of money to produce shows like ‘Murphy Brown’ or ‘MacNeil/Lehrer,’ so you won’t see shows like that on a station like KMET. You will see the cheapest type of programming.”
Although some viewers may prefer watching more high-quality productions, Saltzman said, the station can be successful if it is able to generate a loyal following.
“Sometimes, local television personalities become so popular that (they) gain a large following,” he said. “This is what every station hopes it can develop.”
To pay for its dozen employees and other expenses, KMET runs its own local commercials and also receives a fee for broadcasting “The Home Shopping Network” six days a week. Although the station’s revenues exceeded its $1 million budget in 1993, KMET has not done much to advertise itself. It relies mostly on word-of-mouth to gain viewers.
“We’re somewhere between a commercial and a non-commercial station,” Lohr said. “We’re probably the smallest station in Los Angeles, but not the least important. We try to reach markets that are underserved because our goal is to bring more people into television.”
In an effort to reach out to the estimated 500,000 Salvadorans in Los Angeles, KMET in March began televising “Asi Es Mi Tierra,” a one-hour Spanish-language magazine show produced and taped in El Salvador. The show, which is on every Sunday morning at 10, used to be televised on four other stations but is now being broadcasted exclusively on KMET.
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Instead of showing areas of El Salvador that have been ravished by war, producer and host Jose Trinidad shows footage of the country’s beaches, marketplaces and other attractions.
“What I’m trying to do is show to people that after 12 years of war, El Salvador is still a beautiful place with lots of things to see,” said Trinidad, who goes to El Salvador every other week to tape the show. “My feeling was that the information being put out about the country wasn’t fair. It only showed the bad part.”
On Dec. 5, Trinidad and KMET co-sponsored a telethon to benefit the children of El Salvador and promote tourism in the country. The eight-hour event, which featured a variety of Salavadoran leaders and entertainers, attracted more than 10,000 people to the station’s studios. Along with several local performers, Salvadoran performers La Cinco De Yuca, Chilango Tony Acosta and Fermin Iglesias entertained the crowds.
“We were amazed by the turnout,” Lohr said. “But it showed us that this is our audience.”
Trinidad, who said he nearly has gone bankrupt trying to produce his show, believes the rewards of providing local Salvadorans with footage from their homeland are worth the costs. Trinidad says it costs about $5,000 a month to produce the show, but his traveling expenses are picked up by a local travel agency.
“People living here in Los Angeles cry with me when they see the show and smile with me,” he said. “Whenever I go to a Salvadoran restaurant or business, people recognize me and say, ‘Excellent show.’ ”
Trinidad took out a fan letter he recently received. Holding up the letter, he said the writer “said she doesn’t care how tired she is. She will always wake up Sunday morning to watch the program no matter how late she stays out the night before.”
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Along with producing his own show, Trinidad receives weekly tapes of Latin American soccer games, which are broadcast in their entirety on KMET from 3 to 5 p.m. Saturdays.
“People love the soccer games,” Trinidad said. “One time, the show came on three minutes late, and people started calling up to find out what happened. Some people drove up here when the soccer didn’t show up.”
Although KMET has an estimated 100,000 viewers per day, it has a long way before it can catch up with KSCI-TV Channel 18, an affiliate of the International Channel Network, which is the oldest and highest-rated international station in Southern California.
KSCI general manager Rosemary Danon said that her station, which began its international format eight years ago and broadcasts in 18 languages, serves about 2 million viewers throughout the day. Danon added that she is not worried about losing viewers to the newest station.
“I don’t consider them competition,” she said. “They’re low power.”
While KSCI has a power transmitter with 3 million watts, KMET’s weaker 100,000-watt signal isn’t as clear as KSCI’s in many areas. For instance, viewers in south Orange County and in some parts of Los Angeles County do not receive a clear signal when they tune into Channel 38. The station plans to add a transmitter in Riverside County next month, which will allow viewers in the Inland Empire to tune in.
And unlike KSCI, which is carried by about 90 cable systems, KMET is carried only by Cala Vision in Calabasas, Valley Cable in San Fernando and Hidden Hills Cable. It is also available on Channel 24 in the San Fernando Valley.
But Lohr, who used to be the station manager at KSCI, said he believes KMET is already highly competitive with Channel 18.
“We have a very loyal audience . . . and I’m very happy with that,” Lohr said. “The most important thing we can do is to provide a good TV signal and a consistent schedule.”
Although Lohr said KMET is likely to expand its Central American programming, it also airs programs appealing to a mostly Mexican audience. But unlike other local television stations, KMET has tried to broadcast shows that are produced in Los Angeles.
“Most of the Spanish-language programs now on the air come from Venezuela, Mexico or Miami,” said Chris Garcia, co-producer of CadenaVision, which produces four Spanish-language entertainment shows for KMET. “We only use local artists and crews.”
On a recent AIDS-awareness episode of the “America Al Dia” talk show, host America Bracho encouraged one of her guests to show viewers how to use a condom, demonstrating with a cucumber. “It’s better to die of embarrassment than to die of AIDS,” Bracho told viewers in Spanish.
On Mondays and Wednesdays at 5:30 p.m., KMET airs “La Quebradita Show,” which shows groups performing banda music. CadenaVision also produces a salsa show and a Spanish rock music program.
Garcia, 25, and his partner, Gabriel Marco Meza, 26, said their target audience is Latinos in their teens and 20s.
“A lot of people comment about our age, but I think the television industry needs young people with new ideas and energy,” said Garcia, who was born in El Salvador and grew up in Pico-Union.
KMET also has an extensive international news lineup, offering live segments via the Cable News Network, Deutsche Welle from Germany, France 2, RAI from Italy and News 1 from Moscow. It even broadcasts a live European news program in Spanish on weekdays at 2.
Sunday afternoons at 1, KMET viewers can watch music videos from Africa, interviews with members of the local African community and segments about African culture. Those who tuned in to a recent episode of the African Network Television saw a music video of one of Zaire’s most noted performers, Dongu, and a video of Nigerian singer Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey performing the popular juju music.
Israel (Broe) Bassey, the host and producer of African Network Television, originated the program because he was frustrated that many people in the United States have an image of Africa as a remote place where slaves came from.
“People think Africa is like a jungle,” said Bassey, a native of Nigeria. “I wanted to do something to expose African music, culture and stories to people so that they know what it’s really like.”
Since the show premiered in September, Bassey has received calls and letters from people of all backgrounds. And although the show is taped in a small studio in South-Central and is not as sophisticated as programs on MTV or VH-1, it has gained a loyal following.
“We haven’t had any African shows, so when I heard there was going to be a special show, I was very excited,” said Asuquo Attah, a native of Nigeria and regular viewer of the African Network Television program. “It’s something unique and it keeps you in touch with what’s really going on.”
