ImaginAsian Entertainment, Inc was a multimedia company founded by Michael Hong and Augustine Hong and a group of investors that recognized the emerging importance of "all-things Asian." Based in New York City, its main attraction was a television network, iaTV, which premiered in 2004 and which focused on entertainment featuring Korean, Japanese, and South-East Asian content. The channel competed in certain markets with AZN Television until April 2008, when the competing network ceased broadcasting. ImaginAsian itself ceased operations in 2011, selling its channel slot to CJ E&M for broadcast of the world feed of Mnet.
They also operated The ImaginAsian, a renovated movie theater located in Midtown Manhattan that shows only first-run and classic East Asian films, as well as several film festivals per year. The company renovated a second former movie theater in Los Angeles that opened in December 2007, the former Linda Lea Theater, which originally showed Japanese films and served the Little Tokyo area before shuttering in the 1980s.
In addition, past divisions of the company consisted of iaLink, ImaginAsian Entertainment's monthly on-line magazine, which at one point had over ten million subscribers, ImaginAsian Pictures and Home Entertainment, a film and DVD distribution division that released several DVDs of East Asian films and iaTV original shows, and the successful theatrical and DVD release of the Vietnamese American film Journey from the Fall, and iaRadio, a block of radio programming both streamed on-line as well as made available on certain terrestrial stations.
List of corporate affiliates
ImaginAsian Entertainment (IAEI) is the corporate parent
ImaginAsianTV (iaTV) is the television network
ImaginAsian Radio (iaRadio) is a streaming online radio
iaLink is an online e-zine
The ImaginAsian Theater, a movie theater in New York City which is now owned by Phoenix Theatres ImaginAsian Pictures is for the creation, distribution, and promotion of films ImaginAsian Home Entertainment is the DVD and home video division The ImaginAsian Center is the film/event theatre in the Gallery Row area of Los Angeles, California, which opened on December 1, 2007. The Los Angeles center seems to have stopped operations in October 2008, though its web site (https://web.archive.org/web/20090105222531/http://www.theimaginasian.com/la) is still up.
Shows aired on ImaginAsian
Television programs
Eastern Animation
Japanese
Korean
List of over-the-air TV channels and cable providers
Cable/satellite providers
New York, New York – Time Warner Cable Channel 560
Hudson Valley, New York – Time Warner Cable Channel 560
Los Angeles, California – Time Warner Cable Channel 157
Charter Communications Channel 143
Champion Broadband Channel 196 (Arcadia, Monrovia and Pasadena) San Francisco, California – Comcast Channel 28 Princeton, New Jersey – Patriot Media Channel 149 Houston, Texas – Comcast Channel 241 TVMax Channel 109 Fision Channel 349 Dallas, Texas – Time Warner Cable Channel 342 Fairfax County, Virginia – Cox Communications Channel 465 Hawaii – Oceanic Time Warner Cable Channel 134
Broadcast television stations
Edison, New Jersey – WDVB-CA (Formerly W36AS) Channel 39 (Middlesex, Monmouth, Essex and Union Counties)