For Fred Katayama, it was a moment of profound inspiration. As a Monterey Park fifth-grader in the early 1970s, he came home from school one afternoon and encountered a figure on television who would change his life.
"I ran into the kitchen and I said, 'Mom, there's a Japanese-looking man on TV!' " Katayama recalls. "It was Ken Kashiwahara, who at the time was a reporter for Channel 7 'Eyewitness News.' It was a strong reaction. In hindsight, it was because of the paucity of Asian Americans on television. The only Asian guy I saw on TV in those days was Bruce Lee playing Kato [on the action series "The Green Hornet"]."
Katayama began tuning in to "Eyewitness News" just to see Kashiwahara, considered the dean of Asian American broadcast journalists. By the time he was in high school, the galvanized teen was a full-fledged news junkie, bent on forging a career in journalism.
Today, Katayama is an anchor and correspondent for CNN Financial News. He is just one in a sizable group of Asian American reporters and anchors now working in television news.
Like Katayama, many of them were inspired to enter the field after witnessing such pioneers as Kashiwahara (who recently retired from ABC News), KCBS-TV Channel 2's Tritia Toyota and, especially, ABC's Connie Chung.
"I clearly remember when I moved to the United States [from Singapore] at the age of 7, turning on the New York City news and seeing Kaity Tong anchoring the newscast," says Sharon Tay, who co-anchors the early morning news at KTLA-TV Channel 5. "Seeing an Asian face on the television screen was a big deal, especially for my parents. They thought, 'Wow, what a role model.' "
Asian Americans are still largely absent from the expanding television landscape. Thirty-one years after Bruce Lee appeared as "The Green Hornet's" sidekick, it's still rare to find an Asian American featured prominently in episodic television. Indeed, the only television genre in which one can regularly spot Asian faces, with the exception of foreign-language programming, is broadcast news.
Every major TV station in Los Angeles has at least one or two Asian American news reporters or anchors. KCAL-TV Channel 9, KTTV-TV Channel 11 and KCOP-TV Channel 13 all feature Asian American female anchors on Saturday and Sunday nights. Thanks in part to the influx of cable news channels, this group is also a visible part of the national television news picture. ABC News currently employs five Asian American reporters and anchors.
