Ding Ding TV Joins Cupertino Rotary

Who would imagine someone from the Wild West of China would establish Silicon Valley's first Internet TV station?

Ding was born in Qinghai, a province of western China, near Tibet. Today it is still considered a remote area. It was even less developed when Ding grew up there.

Ding says the major source of her childhood entertainment was an old radio, which made her begin to dream of a career in broadcasting. But her parents didn't have the money to let her pursue her dreams.

When Ding finished high school, she had to choose a local teachers' college, because it was tuition-free, like all other teachers' colleges in China. She majored in English and then taught English in Qinghai.

Another person probably would have been content with the steady job. But Ding wanted more.

To venture into the big world, Ding left Qinghai for Zhuhai, an industrial zone in China's Guangdong Province.

This decision shocked Ding's parents. Her father was especially upset about her resignation from the teaching position. He wrote a letter scolding her for throwing away her duty to China's government, which paid for her college education to have her teach public school.

Ding recalls weeping over the letter, sitting on the beach of Zhuhai. She says she was unaware of tides coming up until the water was ankle deep.

Ding says at that time she kept vowing, "Someday I'll make my family proud of me."

With that promise in mind, Ding worked extremely hard in Zhuhai to get ahead. She reached the level of management within a few years, and then opened an advertising company on her own. Amid her career success, she met the love of her life, Wesley Zhang, a Chinese-American who went to Zhuhai on a business trip.

Ding married Zhang and moved to Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom. She soon became administrative director of T-Square Electronics, a start-up founded by Chinese-Americans.

When the dot-com bubble bust, T-Square moved to China. The loss of Ding's high-tech management position actually brought a new career opportunity to her. She began to work for Sing Tao Radio, a Chinese radio station in the Bay Area.

"My passion has always been in the media," Ding says.

Ding won first place at Sing Tao's DJ contest of 2003. becoming famous in the Chinese community. She deeply involved herself with community service and won Santa Clara County's Asian American Hero Award of 2006.

Also in 2006, Ding participated in producing and hosting the first Chinese children's TV program in the Bay Area, Bay Area Kids, which aired on Channel 26.

Ding says she decided to create an Internet TV station mostly because she found local Chinese TV stations unable to produce more programs because of budget limitations, and she learned that Internet TV would cost much less.

According to Ding, traditional TV air time is about $1,000 per hour, but website live stream gets billed for a $350 monthly fee and extra charge for web traffic exceeding the basic amount. The total monthly payment can be more than $1,000, but that's for a month instead of an hour.

Besides a lower cost, Ding says another advantage of Internet TV is its interactive capacity. While traditional TV dictates what to air on a set schedule, Internet TV allows audience members to click on what they want to watch at the station's website any time.

Internet TV also enables locally produced programs to reach a global audience. So, strictly speaking, Ding Ding TV is not exactly a local TV station. Its programs can be watched online anywhere on earth.

Starting in late 2010, Ding worked with mainstream American producer David Michaelis to put on a bilingual show, Innovation Dialog, which Ding co-hosts with American TV journalist, Gina Smith. They interview inventors in both English and Chinese.

In the meantime, Ding Ding TV hasn't been able to acquire a lot of advertising revenue. Ding says sales is not her forte, but she's the only sales and marketing person of Ding Ding TV, because the station can't afford to hire someone to do the job.

Ding says she's not the only one wearing different hats at Ding Ding TV. Other staff members do, too. It's a lean and mean operation of three full-timers and 16 part-timers.

According to Ding, her husband, Zhang, is not a Ding Ding employee, but he does all kinds of technical work, including lighting set-up for the station, taking time from his busy work schedule as a software director of Applied Materials.

"I thank him the most for everything," Ding says.

With Zhang's help, Ding spends many weekends hosting and video-recording nonprofit events. All the nonprofit video productions are non-paid.