Los Angeles, Calif. (Oct. 12, 2016) — Asian Entertainment Television, Inc. (AET) recently launched as a multiple platform streaming service for pan-ethnic Asian entertainment.
“AET is specifically curating Asian American content as well as content from Asia that includes East Asians, Southeast Asians, South Asians and Middle Easterners,” said Sinakhone Keodara, CEO of AET, who describes the online streaming service as the “Asian Netflix + Spotify streaming platform.”
Keodara founded AET in 2016 to improve Asian American representation in the media and to normalize Asian presence in Hollywood. He studied Film Production at Santa Monica College from 2011-2013, and is considered an accomplished screenwriter, versatile actor and gifted filmmaker.
As a “social justice general” Keodara has led many battles in advocacy fights for the Asian and LGBT community. He has helped to organize, lead and build community around issues he cares about.
Keodara said he is especially proud of the difficult challenge of developing the “Hollywood invAsian for RepresentAsian” in the entertainment industry. His short screenplay placed as a finalist in the Austin Film Festival’s 2015 Teleplay and Screenplay competition beating out 8,627 submissions to be one of five in the finalist round.
This latest challenge with AET is to build a quadruple empire consisting of an OTT streaming platform for Asian Americans, an Asian American film and tv production studio, a management company and a record label representing Asian talents and musicians, respectively.
“These are the plans to usher in a new era in Asian American entertainment in Hollywood,” he said.
The content can be found at www.asianentertainment.tv. Keodara explains the service in more detail below.
How does it work?
Our model is Asian American Netflix + Spotify. AET is the premier global Asian American digital entertainment streaming platform across multiple devices. You can watch it on the web, Apple TV, Roku, iOS and Android devices.
Why did you wanted to start AET?
My goal in founding AET was to provide a platform to improve Asian American representation in the media and normalize Asian presence in Hollywood.
What are the challenges such as getting agreements with all the distributers?
Money. We are pre-seed funding. All the distributors want money to license their content. It’s understandable because it’s just a simple economy of it all. However, we’ve been lucky to get support from Asian American directors (one is an Oscar-winning director/actor) who gives us their full support.
Are there any snags with running this national or international platform as far as legal issues and rights?
Our platform is global and we’re getting non-exclusive worldwide licensing rights from our content creators. If anything, our challenge is more technical in nature as our platform currently doesn’t have geoblocking (blocking out countries that can stream our content) capability. We run into problems when most of our content creators only own North American rights to their content. Once we’re capable of geoblocking then it would greatly expand our library.
How are you able to put together a big enough library to make it worth someone subscribing?
We are a startup and still building our library. AET is a social justice grassroots movement and a revolutionary pop culture media invAsian of Hollywood. If we want things to change we have to do it ourselves. I’ve founded AET for all of us. Now, we need the community to take ownership of it. The great thing with this model is that with user-generated content, we can keep growing our library to be a force to be reckoned with.
What do you have that they can’t find elsewhere — other streaming services?
What sets us apart is that we feature every facet of the Asian experience. We also feature Black Asian, Asian LGBT and Middle Eastern content. With the Iran trade embargo lifted as a result of the Iran Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signed, that is an untapped market that is opening up to the west.
Convenience of streaming versus renting?
AET platform is convenient because you can watch it anytime, anywhere, in any part of the world as we are a global platform.
Is it pay per film or subscription?
We offer unlimited video streaming for only $5.99/month.
Are these American Asian or international films too?
Both. We aim to bring AET to virtually any audience, but we are launching it from the U.S. Thus initially, many titles will be in English or in their original Asian languages with English subtitles if available. But we welcome submissions in all languages, and we hope to expand our range of languages as time moves forward.
Find out more at:
Website: www.asianentertainment.tv
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aetnetwork
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AET_Network
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aet_network
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aetnetwork
