Enduring passions in Little Saigon about the Vietnam War have sent producers of an MTV-style show for young people looking for a new outlet.
Last month Westminster-based Saigon TV on KXLA-44 cancelled VAX-TV, short for “Vietnamese-American Exposure,” a youth-oriented news and entertainment program.
The reason: The show did a segment on “Saigon, USA,” a documentary on Little Saigon that covers the 1999 protests against a video storeowner who had displayed Vietnam’s communist flag and a photo of Ho Chi Minh. In the documentary, a younger Vietnamese-American says the protests accomplished “nothing.”
Older Little Saigon residents, many of whom fled worn-torn Vietnam, flooded Saigon TV with complaints about the show.
Their beef: A show by young upstarts like those at VAX-TV had no business discussing the events of 1999. They argued that even showing footage displaying the communist flag indirectly lends support to the regime they fled.
That prompted Saigon TV officials to cancel the show last month after airing only two episodes. Originally, Saigon TV had planned to air a dozen half-hour episodes.
Officials at Saigon TV declined to comment.
Saigon TV’s owner, Phan Ngoc “Larry” Tieu, issued a statement saying he was under a lot of pressure to pull the show, according to Garden Grove-based Viet Weekly.
“I work for the community and the community asked me to cancel the program,” Tieu said in the statement. “I apologize to the viewers that I did not examine the program’s content before it aired, because I was out of town. So I felt I had to take immediate action by canceling the show.”
Now, producers at Fountain Valley-based VAX-TV say they are shopping their show to other broadcasters.
“We’re talking to a couple other non-Asian Southern California networks, and we’re expecting to launch the show on ImaginAsian TV,” said Sa Dao, VAX-TV’s associate executive producer, who added that a deal with ImaginAsian isn’t final.
ImaginAsian is a new 24-hour channel aimed at Asian Americans, launched by New York-based ImaginAsian Entertainment Inc. It’s available to subscribers who buy extended digital cable or satellite packages.
Targeting Second-Generation
VAX-TV represents a coming of age for OC’s Vietnamese community, which long has been dominated by immigrants. The show targets second-generation Vietnamese, who straddle their traditional culture and that of mainstream America.
“Most (local) Asian channels target an older demographic,people who haven’t learned the local language,” Dao said. “They will be slow to get into our show.”
The Southland’s larger Hispanic community has a similar offering with Los Angeles-based LATV, a music program where hosts switch between Spanish and English and show videos in both languages.
Dao said he hopes to target more mainstream stations, which better reflect a younger demographic, and avoid the kinds of problems his show ran into with Saigon TV.
“We won’t have to worry about the older generation of protesters,it’s a lesson learned from a business standpoint,” Dao said. “I understand their objections,they’ve spent 20 or 30 years supporting local TV and here our show comes in and caters to the more consumer-friendly younger generation.”
The show’s three-minute segment on “Saigon, USA,” aired Oct. 9.
The events of 1999 “really put Little Saigon on the map,” Dao said.
“I respect that these people were very emotional and had a strong response,” Dao said. “It’s unfortunate that Saigon TV did what they did, and that a minority of protesters has so much control. Saigon TV has given us no indication that they will reconsider their decision.”
VAX-TV has been in production now for two years, and has had a Web site during that time that gets 2 million visits a month, according to Dao.
Little Saigon has its share of divisions,those among young and old, newer arrivals and long-term residents, anti-communists and those who want to build ties with Vietnam.
Little Saigon’s acclimated younger generation is more likely to shop elsewhere while the elderly stay put. Another big divide is the gap between those who fled at the end of the Vietnam War by air in 1975,the well-educated and wealthy,and the poorer, less-educated who fled by boat later, mostly in the 1980s.
The 50,000 or so Vietnamese refugees who first arrived at the then-El Toro Marine base created a Vietnamese Ellis Island, with most choosing to remain in OC and eventually creating Little Saigon.
Today, Little Saigon is home to more than 200,000 Vietnamese and their offspring and covers parts of Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Westminster and Santa Ana.
Those who left Vietnam in 1975,about 130,000 in total,came from middle and upper class families or had ties to the U.S. government. Many were Chinese-Vietnamese.
People from the first wave are more likely to just want to move on with Vietnam-U.S. relations. Those who arrived later are more likely to hold a grudge against the current government in Vietnam, because they suffered greater hardship than the first wave in 1975.
Those who fled Vietnam by sea in the late 1970s and 1980s generally experienced a much more arduous journey that resulted in significant psychological trauma for many.
Many of the boat people also endured reprisals inflicted by the country’s post-1975 government, including being sent to mandatory “re-education camps” for those who served in the former South Vietnamese army during the war.
Dao said he is hosting a forum this week to talk about the now-infamous VAX-TV segment.
“We’re inviting the public to come out,” he said.
New York-based Asian Media Watchdog is running a petition to get Saigon TV to put VAX-TV on the air.
