As everyone knows by now, the 2000 census awoke cable ? both programmers and operators ? to the seemingly vast revenue possibilities in creating and marketing services for the Latino population.
But a few recent launches and channel additions on some major operators' systems indicate that other ethnic and national groups ? like French speakers and Vietnamese-Americans ? are also attracting cable's attention. And as the multichannel universe gets more specialized, operators will be able to hone outreach efforts to their local ethnic communities, taking advantage of the thirst for programming that features diverse languages and cultures.
?We're working together [with programmers] to find the right avenues in reaching the communities,? said Sandy Perron, regional director for sales and marketing for Adelphia Communications in Southern California, which has a high concentration of Latino and Asian-American residents. ?Whether it's getting into the churches, local supermarkets, going to a lot of cultural events, we really have to create communications efforts that work.?
The first step, naturally, is acquiring programming services that fill an ethnic or cultural void. Time Warner Cable of New York City last week announced that it would offer TV5 Etats-Unis, a 24-hour French language channel, to its digital customers. TV5 Etats-Unis is an offshoot of TV5 Monde, the state-run French network that is available, according to its executives, in approximately 132 million households in more than 125 countries. As such, it is the third-largest network in the world after MTV and CNN. TV5 Etats-Unis itself has been on AT&T's San Francisco system and Time Warner in Los Angeles for several months.
In New York, the multi-year agreement between TV5 Etats-Unis and Time Warner will mean that more than 350,000 digital subscribers will be able to get the network as a stand-alone service for $9.95 per month. Analog customers will have to pay $12.95 but will also get the International Channel, NewsWorld International (the news network acquired last year by USA as part of their digital realm) and something that Time Warner calls a digital navigator, which provides channel information and access to music services.
TV5 is hoping the channel's mix of news, movies, sports (soccer and rugby especially) and drama series will pique the interest of the New York metropolitan area's approximately half-million French speakers. Describing his network's potential market, TV5 president Serge Adda suggested that it wasn't just French nationals to whom the network would appeal, but Francophones from African and Caribbean nations. ?When I go to New York,? Adda said through a translator, ?one time out of three the driver of my taxi is from the Ivory Coast or Senegal or Haiti and speaks French.? The network's flagship news program will be subtitled in English for the unacculturated English-speaking viewer.
One clear beneficiary of the trend toward international, in-language programming is International Channel Networks (ICN), the Littleton, Colo.-based programmer, which is 90% owned by Liberty Media. Best known for its basic cable service, International Channel, a sort of cable speed blender of programming in more than 20 Asian, European and Middle Eastern languages, also distributes a number of international networks as premium services to operators, including the Italian RAI and the Arabic ART.
Just last week the company announced the launch of nine of its premium services on AT&T's systems in Seattle, bringing to 950 the number of ICN launches since the beginning of 2001.
ICN has also addressed the distinct lack of Vietnamese-American programming on U.S. cable ? a void all the more noticeable because of the Chinese, Japanese and Korean programming that has been available for years ? with the inception of the Saigon Broadcasting Network, a joint venture with Asia Entertainment Inc. The network's programming, which comprises news, talk, sports, cultural, general entertainment and children's shows, is produced primarily in the U.S., despite its name.
Scott Wheeler, International Channel Networks SVP-network development, said this latest programming initiative was inspired to some degree by market research indicating that 93% of Vietnamese-Americans speak Vietnamese at home, compared to an average of 60% to 70% for other ethnic groups. Interestingly, the response from focus groups and marketing research to International Channel Networks' idea of bringing a Vietnamese state-run network to the U.S. was overwhelmingly negative, said Wheeler.
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