The promise of the New Golden Mountain

Today's guest blogger is Cam Hui. I've known Cam for over thirty years since the time he and my kid brother used to play Stock Ticker together. Cam went on to play real life Stock Ticker in Toronto, Boston and New York. I've been talking to him about how the world's changing dynamic represents a financial opportunity which he is in agreement with. His thoughts come from the hedge fund analyst side of him.

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A century ago, the Chinese looked across the Pacific and called it Golden Mountain – and they came. While the streets weren’t paved with gold, the Chinese and other Asians have largely settled in and succeeded in North America. In effect, they made a Golden Mountain of their own.

Canadian demographic studies are more difficult to obtain, but consider the following from the U.S. Census. Asians males are better educated than any other ethnic group in the United States:



Asians also earn more. The chart below shows that there are more Asian families with income more than $75,000 a year is more than any other ethnic group:



Making our own Golden Mountain
For marketers this has to be an enormously attractive demographic to focus on. Better educated, higher income – what would you pay per set of eyeballs compared to other ethnic demographics?

Consider how others have cashed in on ethnic demographics.

In 2000, Robert Johnson became the first US Black billionaire when he sold Black Entertainment Television (BET) to Viacom for US$4b. In 2006, Univision, the Hispanic media conglomerate, was sold for US$12.6b.



Admittedly, the Asian demographic in the United States is about only one-third the size of the Black or Hispanic population. Nevertheless, there is no home grown North American Asian focused media industry. But as an example of what is possible, Loblaws recently bought T&T Supermarkets for $225 million. The former is a well-established Canadian supermarket chain, while the latter is a chain of Asian focused supermarkets with 17 stores in Canada,

Any entertainment company that can create product that can penetrate this demographic will have created its own Golden Mountain.

In future posts, we will consider how to appeal to the Asian market and how to broaden appeal to the larger North American mainstream.

Media? Direction?

Over the years, I have had the wonderful opportunity to work with many of Canada’s government funded broadcasters and funding agencies. However, in the last while, a sad truth seems to be emerging and “showing Canada to Canadians” is not longer a priority. It breaks my heart to see “Jeopardy” on the CBC.

I must admit that I am terribly conflicted by government involvement in our media and cultural agencies. On one hand, I see their necessity – how else can we tell some of the important stories of our nation? But then when I see some of the things that are put on or exhibited and I ask myself, “Are we living in the same country?”
The Canada that I see everyday is a wonderfully diverse community of people with heritages from around the world. Toronto and Vancouver are fantastically diverse which not only adds to the flavour of the city, it is part of its essence. So why is Canadian film and television so white? For the life of me, why does it seem as if programs set in Vancouver seemed to have more American blacks in it than Asians? Aren’t the largest two visible minorities in Canada, the South Asian and Chinese?

But diversity issues aside, almost anybody you talk to about Canadian media will tell you that the system is broken and something should be done about it. Here are a couple of thoughts that might be an interesting entry to discussion.

1. We need to encourage private investment. The media industry is fraught with risk and we need to encourage those that are willing to participate in it. We had a system of tax breaks before but they were so seriously abused, that the investor who only saw the term “tax deduction” didn’t realize that there wasn’t a solid project to go along with the tax relief. I’m not suggesting we go back to this model but we should have some incentives to help build the indigenous private film industry. There are many potentially profitable stories that can be told by Canadians and we need some help to tell them. These films don’t need government investment but private investors should be given some encouragement for their risk.

2. For our public agencies, let’s figure out what we want to do. Right now, it seems that policy changes every couple of years which makes it impossible to achieve an identity. I suggest some kind of Public Inquiry that will look at where we feel we are going as a country and what we feel is important. Once we know what we want to do, then it is easier to figure out who is going to do it and how much it is going to cost. Now this group has to be made up by more than one political party because we can’t keep changing policy every time there’s a change of government. Nor should it made it up of artists/media types only. A non-partisan comprehensive look at what we hope to achieve.

Once these suggestions for private and public companies are determined, let’s give at least a ten year window so that there is time for implementation and stability.
Knowing the rules allows us to know how to play the game. The hard part for those of us that play the game is when the rules keep changing or even worse, it looks like there are no rules at all.

Next week I will be in Toronto for some meetings as I’m the government’s Chair, Chinese Canadian Advisory Committee to the CHRP. I’ve invited Cam Hui, a really bright money guy , to be a guest blogger.

Hollywood North?

Hollywood North. Sounds pretty glamorous and certainly Vancouver has many movie stars gracing our town. We also have a tremendous talent pool and wonderful production resources but I think we need to keep in mind the key reason people come to our fair town – money, or more importantly, saving money.

Between tax incentives, labour rebates and a lower Canadian dollar, we have been substantially cheaper to produce in than Los Angeles or New York. However with the rising Canadian dollar and other production centres becoming more competitive, work is no longer quite so easy to get . Moreover with many American productions, key creative, producing and acting jobs stay American so most of the activity in the film industry here is what is called “service work” – we serve to fulfill the vision of our primarily American clients.

This is a vital part of the industry but as this is so price sensitive, there is a need to develop sources of work that are not quite so cost dependent for survival.
One of these sources is to have a strong indigenous Canadian film and television industry where Canadians control the content, the finances and decision making.
The problem is that this is just darn hard to do. Many organizations and individuals have tried but in the end, there are few successful Vancouver-based companies and individuals that have sustained themselves on the long run at the international level. (There are more in Toronto because their water makes them a lot smarter there.)

Why is this? Well there are many reasons for this. I’ll tackle one reason now and others later.

Filmmaking is expensive, no ifs ands or buts. Paying everyone minimum wage and getting great deals on facilities and supplies, it would be hard to make a feature film for less than $200,000. And that’s lots of money for most people so by necessity, a filmmaker has to partner with somebody or many bodies in order to finance their films.

There are very few funders that one can pitch an idea to and have them say, “That’s great. I’ll finance it just as you described.” Usually, the answer is, “No” or “maybe.” The process of funding and subsequent making of a film can take years to put together. Without generous rich connections or being lucky enough to get government funding, filmmakers have maxed out credit cards, mortgaged their home… even sold their own blood to raise money for their films.

And then if one is successful in making their film, it then has to go out and compete with the mega dollar extravaganzas with huge promotional and marketing campaigns. Talk about David vs many Goliaths.

However, there is a little glimmer of light here. Academy-award winning writer William Goldman once wrote, “Nobody knows anything.” Even after years of sweating bullets to make a film, even with pre-sales, even with big stars, even with huge marketing campaigns – nobody really knows if the film will make money or not so our small indigenous film does have a chance and on occasion, one hits it big.
The problem is that it so seldom happens that it is akin to winning a lottery or as one of my business friends so aptly puts it, “Hope is not a business strategy.”

Oh and let’s not forget that if you have an interest in cultural diversity, things are even harder . More next week.

The Impossible Glass Ceiling

A couple of years ago, I was the keynote speaker for the annual Canadian Heritage breakfast in Ottawa. This is taken from the talk.
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In the past and still in some circumstances today, there was the invisible glass ceiling of racism – it was unspoken but understood that a Chinese could only go so far. To a great extent, that ceiling is no more. We are finding Chinese in every part of society and at all levels of government. However, the ceiling today is not one of racial intolerance but of cultural misunderstanding. If you ask most Chinese in Canada if they have accomplished as much as their Caucasian counterparts with similar backgrounds, most will likely say no. To achieve the same goals, Chinese have to work harder and smarter and they still may not get there.

I do not blame this on racism.

The core of the problem is that the Caucasian decision makers don’t understand the Chinese or really understand cultural diversity because they evaluate needs, people and situations from their own cultural perspective. This is only natural and I do exactly the same thing. I’m a fourth generation Chinese Canadian and do you know something – I still really don’t understand how white people think and if I don’t have a good idea, then I’m sure that they really don’t understand me either.

How does that look in real life? What happens is that when you evaluate things solely from your own cultural perspective, you wind up with results that are remarkably similar to what has always been. In order to affect sea change that is more inclusive, one does not hire workers who look only like the captain. Key members of the governing and decision-making group have got to come from outside the norm of the comfort zone. I can’t tell you how many broadcasters and public funding agencies I’ve met with where the Chinese are the accountants or the clerks but never a key decision maker in terms of programming or policy. This is in Vancouver, where almost half the population is non-white. (And often when they do make decisions in favour of the “ethnics,” it is so clear that the decision is not based on real understanding.)

If we are to have a Canada that reflects a true multiculturalism, you must involve the Chinese, the First Nations people, the Indo-Canadians, the Filipinos - you have to bring us onboard the ship in a very meaningful way. Tokenism is not enough – we need to be able to have decision making abilities.

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After I gave his talk, then Secretary of State Jason Kenney introduced himself to me and his staff – a virtual United Nations with Canadians of many different heritages. I thought to myself – here’s a guy who gets it, in word and action.

Next Week – we start exploring the facts and myths of Hollywood North.

Hey You!

Hello Everybody and welcome to The Changing Face. While I’ve been writing and making films professionally for quite awhile now, it’s almost always been about something or somebody else. Recently, I have been encouraged to share some of my own values and views on the world so thus begins what I plan to be a weekly series of personal perspectives on the world.

To best understand this world, you’ve got to know a bit about me. I’m a Chinese Canadian, I’m old enough to remember when the Beatles first came out, I’m a Christian and have been working in media for twenty-five years. I made a living playing keyboards in bars and clubs for years, then went back to school and completed a Master’s of Music from the University of Toronto. Not wanting to teach, I hung my shingle out as a composer and did commercials for Shell and Toyota and spent four seasons on Sesame St.

In the mid-1990’s, I started writing, directing and producing of entire projects, documentary and dramatic, most of them with a particular niche of showing Chinese as part of North America’s cultural mainstream. The Changing Face is the name of one of these projects that got locked into development hell but the concept still holds true – North America’s face is changing and one key color is yellow. And anyone that doubts that China is now a predominant world player is in a different universe than I live in.

Now this is really important, culturally, socially, politically and financially, especially if one believes, as I do, that the Chinese will be as important a force in North American and world entertainment as the Afro-American community has become. While I’ll be doing most of the writing of the blog, I’ll be having some great guests sit in who can shed additional light.

I’m excited to be part of this growth but “it’s complicated” which means it’s real. It may even on occasion be controversial. Stay tuned.