AsianWeek reports that Comcast pulled the plug on iaTV, formerly Imaginasian, in San Francisco on July 22. iaTV is still carried in Asian American hotspots including New York and Los Angeles. Apparently, iaTV was give only 24 hours before they were disconnected in San Francisco.
Comcast’s reason:
“[iaTV] was one of the least accessed channels in the San Francisco,” said Andrew Johnson, vice president of communications for Comcast in California. “Customer service surveys continually showed low interest for this station.”
Imaginasian 2.0 started with a bang, but losing the San Francisco market hurts their new strategy of “Asian pop culture”. iaTV will need to find another outlet in the San Francisco Bay Area, but IA media president Adam Ware did not help his cause by bashing in-language TV stations in the Bay Area.
“Stations like KTSF do a disservice to the Asian American market as they niche Asian communities and then pitch programming in their languages – to me that’s horribly uninspired,” said Ware. “I am a firm believer that there is room for an English Asian pop culture channel.”
Do you want to see iaTV return to the San Francisco Bay Area?
iatv’s latest teaser