Ken Jeong will host See Us Unite for Change, a special paying tribute to the Asian-American experience that will appear May 21 across the MTV Entertainment Networks. It will also stream on Facebook Watch.

Airing during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, the show is being designed to use music, comedy, short films and speakers to inspire and educate viewers at a time when Asians are being targeted in hate crimes.

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The event is being produced by The Ford and MacArthur Foundations, working with Jesse Collins Entertainment and MTV Entertainment Studios.

“We are outraged and deeply saddened by the escalation of hate crimes against AAPI communities and stand with them in the fight against xenophobia and bigotry,” said Chris McCarthy, president, MTV Entertainment Group. “Hate against one of us is hate against all of us and by working together on a global scale, we can help end this senseless violence.”

“This event comes at an important time for our AAPI community, as we unite with our allies to celebrate the breadth and diversity of the Asian American experience,” said Sheila Lirio Marcelo, See Us Unite for Change executive producer and founder of Care.com. “There is more work to be done in raising awareness of the contributions of our AAPI community and we’re honored to have the support of our partners as we work to build solidarity in service of a more equal and just society in America.”

The executive producers of this event are Sheila Lirio Marcelo, and Jesse Collins, Kimmie Kim and Carol Donovan of Jesse Collins Entertainment.

“I am honored to be a part of an event that will highlight the rich history of the Asian community,” said Jesse Collins, founder & CEO, Jesse Collins Entertainment. “Asian Pacific Americans have played an important role in shaping our country and bringing visibility to this broad community is something I am truly honored to do.”

See Us Unite for Change is part of a broader advocacy campaign, See Us Unite, that is designed to accelerate impact and expand support for the AAPI community through the amplification of voices and education about the Asian American experience. 

The Writers Guild of America East said the creative community needs to step up to help its Asian American and Pacific Islander screenwriters and journalist members in the midst of a wave of hate crimes believed to stem, at least in part, from President Trump's branding of COVID-19 as "the China virus."

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"As members, we recognize that we can play a key role in changing misperceptions about Asian Americans, and we take that responsibility seriously," the guild said in a statement. "But we can all do more. As writers of television, film, broadcast news and digital news, we pledge to do better."

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It provided some concrete examples of how that could be done, including "giving careful consideration to our portrayal of fictional characters of Asian descent" and "covering their communities fairly, accurately and prominently." WGAE members include both entertainment and news writers.

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They also said the guild would continue its education, training and outreach efforts.

Earlier this year, the Society of Professional Journalists has teamed with the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) to put a spotlight on threats, harassment and violence toward Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI), including journalists.

Asian-Americans are shunning traditional TV for streaming services, with YouTube among their top streaming choices, according to a new Horowitz Research report.

On average, Asian TV viewers spend 44% of their time streaming video content, compared to just 38% of their time watching live TV, according to Horowitz’s Focus Asian: The Media Landscape 2018 report. That compares to 35% of total viewers who spend their time streaming compared to 43% devoted to live TV, according to the report.

Further, a full 14% of Asian TV viewers spend upwards of 75% of their viewing time with streamed content compared to 7% of consumers overall.

The numbers are not surprising. While shows like CBS’ Hawaii Five-0, ABC’s Fresh From The Boat and HBO’s Silicon Valley feature multiple Asian-American actors in starring roles -- and with Sandra Oh earlier this year becoming the first woman of Asian descent to be nominated for a best actress Emmy award for her role in BBC America’s Killing Eve -- Asian Americans remain woefully underrepresented on the small screen.

While there are more than 21 million Americans of Asian descent in the US according to the US Census Bureau, only 4% of television series regulars were Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, according to a 2017 study on Asian American characters on television dubbed “Tokens On The Small Screen." Further, a full 64% of shows not featuring a single AAPI series regular, according to the multi-university report. 

"The Asian audience has long posed a challenge for traditional TV providers ...there has always been a market for in-language and culturally relevant content, but the linguistic and cultural diversity of the Asian market has made scalability a hurdle,” said Adriana Waterston, Horowitz’s senior vice president of Insights and Strategy. ““This is why we saw that even before broadband and YouTube, bilingual and Asian-language dominant Asian audiences were going online to find the content they wanted.”

When Asian-Americans stream, YouTube and Netflix are the most popular choices. According to the report, Asian streamers watch Netflix 29% of the time and YouTube 28% of the time.

The affinity for YouTube in particular is driven by bilingual and Asian-language dominant viewers looking for content that reflects their images and stories. Among English dominant Asians, 15% report going to YouTube first while 29% of bilingual and Asian-language dominant viewers go to YouTube first.

YouTube historically has served as a platform for Asian-American stars to become household names around the world, from Natalie Tran to Anna Akana, by providing an outlet for Asian Americans to showcase their talent. .

“When YouTube first started its main stars were predominantly Asian … and people were asking, 'why are all the stars on YouTube Asian?,'” Akana recently told me in an interview. “I think it’s because we lacked such mainstream representation that when we saw a face that looked like us doing comedy or doing lifestyle videos we were drawn to it.”

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Multicultural-themed programming is riding a wave of ratings and critical success on TV, but that rising tide isn’t lifting all boats.

From Emmy Award-winning shows like Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black and its multicultural cast, to ratings hits like Fox’s Empire, Starz’s Power and ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat and Black-ish, ethnically diverse TV content is hot. But even in such a TV climate, executives at independently owned multicultural networks said their services still struggle to gain widespread distribution.

Even with a growing base of multicultural subscribers who watch more hours of television than white viewers — along with an increase of young, multicultural millennials who are either cord-cutters or cable-nevers — distributors aren’t rushing to sign up networks that target the industry’s current and future subscribers, executives said.

“Overall, 40% of the population is multicultural, so what all that means is multicultural is now the new mainstream,” said Tonia O’Connor, chief commercial officer and president of content distribution for Univision Communications, which also handles distribution duties for four-year-old, male-targeted El Rey Network and young, Hispanic audience-targeted news service Fusion.

“It’s good business to be in this business,” O’Connor said. “Whether distributors have come to embrace it yet or not, they absolutely have to in order to continue to have any growth in the future — they can no longer ignore the multicultural consumer or opportunity.”

A HOT CATEGORY

While most television observers recognize today’s lineup of quality content from cable, broadcast and over-the-top digital services like Netflix as a new Golden Age of Television, it’s also arguably the most prolific time for multicultural programming.

This comes as the U.S. grows more diverse, and as diverse groups grow more influential determining in how and when entertainment content is delivered.

African-Americans watched more than 44 hours of live and time-shifted TV a week during fourth-quarter 2015, well above the 31-hour average for all adults, according to the recent Nielsen Total Audience Report. Hispanics nearly double all viewers in minutes spent watching video on smartphones, while Asian-Americans use multimedia devices to view television nearly a full hour more than the general public does.

Given those realities, the assumption would be that multichannel-video providers would be aggressive in launching networks aimed at the growing, highly influential multicultural audience. But network executives said some distributors have yet to recognize the value of multicultural content.

Most high-profile shows with appeal to multicultural audiences air on mainstream networks backed by major media companies, Africa Channel executive vice president of content and global operations Narendra Reddy said, adding that independently-owned multicultural channels don’t have the budget or staff to develop and market such programming. But that doesn’t mean Africa Channel’s scripted movies and reality shows originating from the continent are any less valuable or appealing to multicultural viewers, Reddy said.

He added that most favored nations language in contracts, restrictions on social-media marketing and promotion of content on the Web, and a lack of negotiating power during contract talks have hampered Africa Channel’s ability to gain distribution as an independent network.

“Even if the heads of programming for these various distributors believe that this content that we have will resonate with audiences, basically they’re forced to carry networks from the companies that have far greater leverage than we do,” Reddy said.

That doesn’t sit well with multicultural viewers who respond favorably to content targeted toward them. According to a recent Horowitz Race, Diversity and Media survey, 64% of multicultural millennials said they found television shows featuring a mainly multicultural cast appealing, compared to 44% of white viewers.

Yet beyond a few select shows, network executives say such images are rare on the current lineup of cable channels.

STILL AN UNDERSERVED AUDIENCE

“A multicultural cable subscriber today sees his or her dollar being mainstream, but the reality is when they look at what’s being offered they’re seeing that there’s just not that much there,” said Mark Walton, president of sales and marketing for One Caribbean Television. “Even though you may see an article or some conversation around all of this, from the consumer’s perspective it gets back to ‘I have 500 channels and I only have four or five that are addressing some of the interests I have.’ ”

One Caribbean Television, which offers entertainment, news and weather content from such Caribbean nations as the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica and Barbados, is currently offered on RCN with the network in distribution talks with several other operators. One Caribbean targets the nearly 10 million to 20 million African-Americans who have some connection to the Caribbean, as well as mainstream viewers who travel and have interest in the region.

“The consumer is paying X dollars but is getting X minus dollars in terms of value to them,” Walton said. “In order to breach that gap and reduce churn, you have to have the offerings that that consumer wants.”

Network executives said they recognize that MVPDs are under pressure to curb programming costs and adjust programming packages to prevent younger subscribers from churning or shifting to over-the-top subscription VOD services.

“[Distributors] might not be as confident to take risks on launching multicultural-themed channels,” Miguel Santos, general manager for Asian-American targeted network Myx TV, said. “The business environment is di_ cult — they’re seeing some churn, so it’s making a lot of MVPD executives risk-averse. They don’t really see at the moment the value of multicultural channels.”

One executive who said she does recognize the value of multicultural content is Verizon Fios executive director of content strategy and acquisition Michelle Webb. She told the Horowitz Associates Cultural Insights Forum in March that the telco is looking to balance that with finding the best ways to offer the most choice to consumers.

“It’s all about managing demand and bandwidth considerations,” she said.

Aspire TV has seen some small but noteworthy movement on the distribution front, vice president of business affairs and channel operations Melissa Ingram said. The African-American-targeted network, founded by basketball hall of famer Earvin “Magic” Johnson, has seen its subscriber rolls grow to 34 million viewers since its 2012 launch; it projects it will be in 37 million homes by year-end.

“Not only is [the multicultural] audience is requesting this type of programming but … from a business standpoint, affiliates are starting to understand the importance of having diverse content,” she said. “They’ve seen the success of shows like Empire and they’ve seen a movement by subscribers demanding such content, which is forcing these large distributors to understand the importance and value of it and to get more content like that on their systems.”

As networks continue to push for linear distribution, others are exploring the Web in an eff ort to generate interest and awareness for their brands. Networks such as Myx TV, Fuse and One Caribbean Television use apps to give viewers a chance to check out video content from the networks, as well as some live programming.

BOOSTING ONLINE REACH

“If you want to reach a younger audience, you have to be available on all of the relevant devices, and you have to have content that’s available on-demand,” Fuse Media CEO Michael Schwimmer said. “Obviously, you have to be able to balance that with the network’s role within the pay TV ecosystem, but I think that it’s all doable and important. Anybody that doesn’t have a strong digital presence does so at their own risk.”

Myx TV’s Santos believes networks targeting multicultural millennials in particular may find online distribution a more attractive way of exposing the brand to key audiences. Asian-Americans, especially, tend to watch content online on various mobile devices, so anyone looking to reach that audience would fare well in the digital space, according to Santos.

Myx TV is considering launching an OTT service in the near future, although Santos would not disclose a time frame. “OTT is possibly the key to diversifying entertainment,” he said. “Given the competitive environment and the uncertainty within the industry, it would behoove us to look at all options to really get our content out.

“In the end, the power is with the viewer, and they will decide where they want to watch their content — if they want to watch it over the top we should be there, and if they want to watch it on a linear platform we should be there, too.”