The U.S. Census Bureau recently announced that Asians were the country’s fastest-growing ethnic group in 2012. Their population jumped 2.9%, or 530,000 to 18.9 million, with 60% of this increase coming from international migration. As many migrants have limited English proficiency, their growth in numbers has led to opportunities for media companies which serve ethnic minorities. In April Magic Broadcasting agreed to sell KDAY, a Los Angeles-based hip hop radio station that had helped bring the West Coast rap scene into prominence, to a group of Chinese investors for $19.5 million. If the deal is approved by the Federal Communications Commission (), KDAY is likely to switch from playing Jay-Z and Kanye West to a Chinese language format. I spoke to Arthur Liu, founder and chief executive of Multicultural Radio Broadcasting, to discuss his broadcasting niche and his views on the future of the industry. (Liu is not involved in the KDAY deal.) The son of a journalist, Liu was born in Shandong, China and later moved to Taiwan and the U.S.. He started the company in 1982 and launched his first radio station (WNWK, 105.9) in New York in 1992. Six years later, a change in FCC regulations allowed him to sell the station, along with another smaller station, to Heftel Broadcasting, then the nation’s largest Spanish language radio group, for $135 million. Given that Liu only paid $5 million for the station, he used most of the proceeds to buy ten more radio stations on the West Coast. Today, Liu splits his time between New York and California, managing a nationwide network of 40 radio stations and serving ethnic minorities in ten major markets. Liu says his business builds on the diversity of race, culture and language in the country. His radios stations mirror the ethnic makeup of the population, broadcasting daily in Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian and several other languages. He specifically targets the Asian-American market because the audience in its different subcultures cannot be reached so broadly, unlike the Spanish language market. Before entering a radio market, Liu looks carefully at its geographic location and the size of its audience. He adds that the company has no Vietnamese language programing in New York but several Vietnamese language stations in southern California. To cater to the large Spanish-speaking population, Liu also leases airtime in 12 stations to Spanish language producers, who design their own content and seek their own advertising streams. While Liu says his radio business is “doing very well,” he admits that it has been greatly affected by the rise of new forms of media. He says that the company is adopting new broadcasting trends such as mobile applications and internet streaming. He cites the company’s Radio Chinese Plus, a radio application for smartphones that currently has 680,000 active users. Liu is also expanding his cable business, which complements his radio business and broadens his reach. His radio and cable branches are housed in the same buildings – in New York and Los Angeles – and …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
