Third Thursdays

Co-presented by the Center for Asian American Media

Thursday, January 19, 2006
7:00-9:30pm
Japanese Cultural & Community Center
1840 Sutter Street
San Francisco, CA 94115

With the recent announcement of its downsizing, AZN TV, the upstart Asian American cable network, joins the long list of promising but unsuccessful, corporate attempts to bring balanced images of Asian Americans into mainstream media. 2005 left us with dubious achievements to celebrate in the mainstream media: the missed coverage of APA communities affected by Hurricane Katrina, continued racism on the radio, and Bai Ling’s re-emergence on TV and the big-screen.

However, times are changing. Asian American bloggers, filmmakers, musicians, and artists can now create and publish content online on their own terms–independent of traditional media–in a cheap, easy, and unprecedented fashion.

These same online trends are also responsible in part for the steady decline of traditional media businesses. Revenues for major newspapers, record labels, and film studios are declining, as people are spending more time using online resources like MySpace, Craigslist, Netflix, and Google.

Is this an opportunistic beginning of a revolution in Asian American media, or just a momentary glitch in the matrix? Find out as we ask our panelists of APA publishers, artists, and organizers.

Related Links:

• http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/12/08/apop.DTL
• http://www.thelongtail.com/the_long_tail/2005/11/mainstream_melt.html
  

* The title of January’s TT comes from a poem by Beau Sia