This article examines the rise and fall of ImaginAsian TV to illustrate the travails of imagining a broadcast community of Asian Americans and the potential effect this has on the politics of representation. Drawing on institutional politics, media history, and oral interviews, the article analyzes the problematic conceptualization of a homogeneous Asian American audience, and further explicates how the usage of the English language in ImaginAsian’s programming strategy, despite its syndicated programs in different Asian languages, could not accommodate the disparate but interconnected cultural logics of transnationalism, race and ethnicity, and diaspora which structure Asian and Asian American identities.
JungDaniel Y.2006. “How MTV and Other Corporations Are Challenging Asian America: An Examination of the Business Perspective on Asian American Identity.” Asian American Policy Review15: 49–56.
LeeSangjoon. 2015. “From Diaspora TV to Social Media: Korean TV Dramas in America.” In Hallyu 2.0: The Korean Wave in the Age of Social Media, edited by NornesAbe MarkusLeeSangjoon, 172–91. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
18.
LoweLisa. 1991. “Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies1 (1): 24–44.
19.
LoweLisa. 1996. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham: Duke University Press.
20.
MallapragadaMadhavi. 2012. “Mixed Signals: MTV Desi, South Asian American Audiences, and the Discourse of Ethnic Television.” South Asian History and Culture3 (4): 549–65.
21.
MoranKristin. 2011. Listening to Latina/o Youth: Television Consumption within Families. New York: Peter Lang.
22.
NaficyHamid. 1998. “Narrowcasting in Diaspora: Middle Eastern Television in Los Angeles.” In Living Color: Race and Television in the United States, edited by TorresSasha, 82–96. Durham: Duke University Press.
23.
NguyenMimi ThiTuThuy Linh Nguyen. 2007. “Introduction.” In Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America, edited by NguyenMimi ThiNguyenThuy Linh, 1–34. Durham: Duke University Press.
OkadaJun. 2015. Making Asian American Film and Video: History, Institutions, Movements. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
27.
OngAihwa. 1996. “Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making: Immigrants Negotiate Racial and Cultural Boundaries in the United States.” Current Anthropology37 (5): 737–62.
28.
OrenTasha. 2016. “The Blood Sport of Cooking: On Asian American Chefs and Television.” In Global Asian American Popular Cultures, edited by DavéShilpaNishimeLeilaniOrenTasha, 244–62. New York: New York University Press.
29.
RobbinsKevin. 2001. “Changing Spaces of Global Media.” In Images of the ‘Modern Woman’ in Asia: Global Media, Local Meanings, edited by MunshiShoma, 17–33. Richmond: Curzon.
30.
RojasVivianaPiñonJuan. 2014. “Spanish, English or Spanglish? Media Strategies and Corporate Struggles to Reach the Second and Later Generations of Latinos.” International Journal of Hispanic Media7 (August): 1–15.
WolockLiaPunathambekarAswin. 2015. “Race and Ethnicity in Post-Network American Television: From MTV-Desi to Outsourced.” Television and New Media16 (7): 664–79. doi:10.1177/1527476414564985
37.
WongSau-Ling C.2000. “Denationalization Reconsidered: Asian American Cultural Criticism at a Theoretical Crossroads.” In Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Literature, edited by SinghAmritjitSchmidtPeter, 122–148. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
38.
ZhouMin. 2004. “Are Asian Americans Becoming White?”Context3 (1): 29–37.
