Dr. Oz To Bring Foreign Television Shows To Immigrants With JungoTV Streaming Service

Dr. Oz says he is constantly surprised of how little access immigrants have to the popular shows from their countries while living in the United States. “Immigrants have no access to their cultural stories; the ones they grew up with,” Oz insisted. This is why he joined a new venture called JungoTV, which will attempt to give immigrants access online to the most popular shows from their countries. The service is set to launch in September targeting Italian, Arabic, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Filipino and Greek communities with over 18,000 hours of programming. Users will have to pay a monthly fee of $14.99 to get an app that will grant them access to entertainment shows only.

Dr. Oz is partnering with George Chung, who had a company that brought Vietnamese programming to the U.S. and Sandy Climan from Entertainment Media Ventures, all of whom hope the app will bring a different approach to the streaming service which many other executives are looking to create as well.

Details of the specific programming have not been released, which will probably be the main indicators that will differentiate the service. Oz, however, did clarify that the app will carry entertainment shows exclusively and no news or sports as of yet.

He said the idea also came from seeing his Turkish parents constantly missing the cultural stories and connection to their home country.

Potentially for the same reasons, streaming services such as Netflix are producing original content in different countries and languages. In terms of Latino-targeted content, they produced their first original series in Spanish was "Club de Cuervos" which debuted last year, and are now set to make “Ingobernable” with Kate del Castillo (who will play Mexico’s First Lady) and “Edha,” the first-ever Netflix series to be made entirely in Argentina.

Hopefully, initiatives like these help break barriers around the world and contribute greatly to the necessary diversity that needs to take over the industry.