Arthur Liu

ARTHUR LIU
A native of China and longtime resident of Taiwan, Arthur Liu (and his wife is Yvonne) graduated from the Newhouse School with a master's degree in public communications in 1966. Starting from nothing, he built a media empire that now includes more than 30 radio stations, three cable networks and a weekly publication. Liu's Multicultural Radio Broadcasting, Inc. broadcasts daily in dozens of languages and has stations across the U.S., including major cities such as New York, Dallas, Los Angeles and Seattle.

Arthur Liu, whose Western pop music radio shows were a big hit back in 1960s Taiwan, bought 30 radio stations in the United States in the 1990s, becoming a mogul in Chinese-language media there, and writing an amazing page in broadcasting history. As a result, he created a Chinese radio empire in America as the natin’s top owner of small AM stations in big markets.

On these stations he sells brokered time, mostly to Latino and Asian programmers. If he has enough buyers in one language, he'll devote a station to that one language all day, so that in NYC 1470 WZRC is Cantonese all day. 930 WPAT is mostly Korean, although overnight Mr. Liu sells time to a DJ who programs a standards/big bands show. He provides a valuable service for immigrants who'd otherwise have no broadcast media if they had to buy and support a 24/7 radio station.

He bought most of the Radio Unica stations for $150M when that Spanish Talk network closed shop last year, leaving behind a dozen AM stations in large Latino markets. The combined company will have 43 radio stations after select divestitures, making it the 18th largest radio broadcasting company in the country based on the number of stations owned.

Liu's one shot at actually programming and running a station in English came a few years ago when NYC was left with no adult standards station. (ABC made a deal with the NY Times to broker Radio Disney 24/7 on 1560 WQEW, knocking off that station's standards format.) Liu took a 5000 watt station in nearby Newark NJ, 1430 WNSW and made it a locally programmed adult standards station (his personally favorite).

Liu Foundation Board - The Liu Multicultural Scholarships will encourage graduate students at the Newhouse School to engage in the exploration of other cultures, and to use their communications skills to educate a media audience desperately in need of a worldwide perspective. It is no exaggeration to say that our future depends on it."

In 2001, the American Advertising Federation named Liu as an inaugural honoree of its Mosaic Awards. The awards were created to recognize industry trailblazers who have contributed significantly to the evolution of multicultural marketing and advertising, as well as celebrating extraordinary achievements in diversity.

In the 1960’s, for eight years he hosted trendsetting programs in Taiwan featuring Western pop music on Youth Radio, the police radio network, and the Broadcasting Corporation of China that did more than anyone to bring this type of music to the radio listeners.

Arthur was born into the Chinese journalism aristocracy. His father was a well-known reporter for the Central News Agency in mainland China in the 1930s and 40s, who also, together with a number of other important first-generation reporters, founded the well-known journal Newsdom.

Liu attended National Taiwan Normal University Affiliated High School and fell in love with English and Western music. He also got hooked on broadcasts of Western pop music from Australia and the Philippines. While at school, he found an opportunity to host a Western music program at Youth radio station, which became a hit among its radio listeners that also received a great deal of fan mail.

After graduation and completion of his military obligations, Liu hosted pop music programs for a total of eight years at three different radio stations. When he turned 30, he decided to go to the United States to pursue courses in media studies.

After acquiring a master's degree in communications from Syracuse University, he went to work at ABC, one of the US's three major broadcast television and radio networks for $400.00 (US).

In 1972, Arthur Liu, now familiar with the corporate culture of American television, established Sino TV Incorporated in New York. Four years later he founded the Sino Radio Broadcast Corporation, and began producing original Chinese language programming. At the same time he came out with Sino Daily Express and started to established extensive contacts in the media world from the world of American TV and radio.

In 1982, he applied to purchase a radio station whose license had been suspended: 105.9 FM in New York. In 1992, after the Federal Communications Commission announced a new law designed to stop frivolous bids (the law forbade those who acquired licenses from giving compensation to other competitors), he completed the purchase. At the radio station, he found program hosts who could really make minority listeners feel at home, and the station became immediately popular with the many minority groups that exist in New York City.

From 1993 to 1995, Liu purchased his second New York radio station, as well as three AM stations (KAZN 1300, KMRB 1430, and KMNY 1600) in Los Angeles.

In 1998, a FCC rule change (FCC limit on the number of radio stations that could be owned by an individual or corporation) provided the opportunity for a nationwide Spanish-language network to acquire a station in New York for $100 million (US) from his company.

As Liu explains: "When you buy media, you have to look at the operations multiple. You can sell a television station for about ten times operations value, and a newspaper for seven to eight times, but a radio station you can sell for 14 times the value!"

At the present time, he and his wife own stations in New York, Washington, Virginia, Maryland, Florida, Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle, San Jose, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and other cities and states. Moreover, through satellite links and alliances, Liu's Multicultural Broadcasting Corporation has created a nationwide network of minority-market radio stations, broadcasting daily in dozens of languages. He also has three Chinese language TV stations in New York.

His future includes crossing over into cable and satellite television and establishing a one-hour long Chinese-language program that will be broadcast on a nationwide network.

He has also invested nearly US$1 million to purchase a radio station on Long Island where students can practice producing programs of their own, to develop "loyal professionals" for years to come. There he sows and nurtures the seeds for the medium he loves so much, and waits for the future harvest.

	Jung Chang

JUNG CHANG
Born in Yibin, Sichuan Province, China in 1952, Jung Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen and then worked as a peasant, a "barefoot" doctor, a steelworker and an electrician before becoming an English Language student and, later, an assistant lecturer at Sichuan University.

She left China for Britain in 1978 and was subsequently awarded a scholarship by York University, where she obtained a PhD in Linguistics in 1982 - the first person from the People's Republic of China to receive a doctorate from a British University. She has since also been awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Buckingham, York, Warwick and the Open University. Dr. Chang currently is working on a biography of Mao Zedong.

Her spellbinding lectures charting the dramatic developments in 20th century China, provide a truly unique, inspiring and uplifting experience and help to understand the challenge of 21st Century globalization.

Jung Chang's book "Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China" has been translated into 30 languages and has sold over 9 million copies world-wide, reaching no. 1 in over a dozen countries, including Japan, Britain, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Holland and Scandinavia.

"Wild Swans" has won many awards, including the NCR Book Award UK (1992), UK Writers' Guild Best Non-Fiction (1992) and Book of the Year UK (1993). It is the most widely read book about China this century.

Jude Chang has turned down BBC’s request to make a $15.6 million television drama out of the best-selling book Wild Swans (which documents the travails of three generations of women in the writer's family against the backdrop of recent Chinese history) because of her insistence on using mainland Chinese actors and on filming the series in Mandarin with English sub-titles.

Her ability as a brilliant and tender writer provided her the ability to write with such clarity the story of her own family’s life and hardships faced in China during the Communist rule.