Latino Coalition’s Bid for KTTV: Full Assault, Long Odds

It seemed like just another routine face-off when the National Hispanic Media Coalition sat down with KTTV’s management last May to discuss Channel 11’s record in hiring Latinos.

Leaders of the coalition of 32 organizations had raised the same issue nearly a year before in front of KCBS Channel 2’s studio with about 100 pickets, and later with KABC Channel 7.

But something happened after the meeting that transformed this low-intensity, closed - door dialogue over hiring practices to the first licensing battle to hit Los Angeles television since KHJ-TV Channel 9’s license was challenged 23 years ago.

Information leaks from employees at the Fox-owned station and a perusal of KTTV’s public file turned up what the coalition viewed as new revelations indicating that the station’s liabilities went beyond employment issues. More aggressive tactics, perhaps even filing a licensing challenge before the Federal Communications Commision, were indicated, coalition leaders concluded.

The coalition’s moment of decision would come nearly 5 months later when it submitted a proposal to increase Latino hiring and promotion at KTTV before a second meeting with station executives on Oct. 19.

KTTV officials balked, saying they viewed the proposed settlement as an onerous attempt to intimidate them into making hasty concessions.

Coalition chairman Armando Duron saw the station’s response as a lack of negotiating will and a delaying tactic designed to prevent the coalition from taking advantage of the fast-approaching Nov. 1 deadline for filing license challenges with the FCC.

The coalition decided to go for the throat. In a matter of days, a committee headed by Esther Renteria--the owner of a public relations firm who was then in the midst of winning a financial settlement in a licensing challenge against KRTH-AM/FM--pulled together 15 Latino professionals and business people to start Rainbow Broadcasting Inc., which on Nov. 1 formally challenged Fox for the KTTV license.

The firm’s shareholders include Fernando Del Rio, vice president of public affairs at KHJ-TV Channel 9; David Lizarraga, president of TELACU, an East Los Angeles-based business conglomerate; Mary Salinas Duron, a First Interstate Bank vice president who is married to coalition chairman Duron, and Evelyn Fierro, a South Pasadena city councilwoman and news writer-producer at KNBC Channel 4.

While officials at the local chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said that Rainbow’s decision represents a new Latino willingness to seek legal remedies beyond traditional pressure group tactics, the group still faces daunting hurdles.

An FCC official said that 60 license challenges, or comparative applications, have been filed against TV and radio stations nationwide since 1980. Only a handful, however, ended with the challenger getting a license, the official said.

But long odds don’t seem to deter Fox’s adversaries.

Rainbow officials said their action is part of a multipronged assault by the Latino community to put Los Angeles radio and TV broadcasters on notice. Citing what they claimed were low rates of Latino employment and promotion, the coalition last week filed less severe petitions to deny license renewals for KCOP Channel 13 and KCET Channel 28. The group also announced that it had secured written guarantees from KCBS and KABC to increase Latino hiring.

Indeed, some demographers and marketing analysts see a glimpse of the future in these actions, one in which Los Angeles broadcasters will soon have to grapple with the hiring, programming and marketing implications of the demographic revolution transforming the city’s former minorities into a new majority.

While several Rainbow investors double as coalition members, however, Rainbow officials say their agenda doesn’t include bargaining for more jobs, despite a willingness expressed by officials at Fox TV Stations Inc., KTTV’s parent company, to talk about a possible settlement.

Robert Lewis Thompson, Rainbow’s Washington-based attorney, said his clients have instructed him to reject negotiations at this time: “The only settlement we are interested in is one that gives us the keys to the station.”

Acknowledging the company’s willingness to talk settlement, Dean Ferris, vice president of employee relations for Fox TV Stations Inc., said nevertheless that he is confident that Fox will prove its fitness to operate the station. “I don’t believe there is any question of that and we have demonstrated it through the running of KTTV,” he said in an interview.

John Huerta, coalition legal counsel and a Rainbow shareholder, said that FCC records tell a different story.

While Rainbow claims that 32% of the workforce in Los Angeles County is Latino, Huerta said, only 14.1% of KTTV’s workforce in 1988 was Latino, which falls short of the minimum “half workforce parity” recommended by the FCC. (FCC records show that only one station in the Los Angeles market--KNBC--surpasssed the FCC guideline this year, with 17.65% of its overall work force being Latino.)

Worse, Huerta claimed, was KTTV’s record when it came to its upper management. In the last five years, the number of Latinos working in managerial, professional and sales positions increased from 8.8% in 1983 to only 9.4%, he said.

Thompson said the Latino workforce estimate cited by Rainbow is based on several sources, including Los Angeles County Department of Health Services population projections and updated, but unreleased, Census Bureau demographic data for Los Angeles County.

Fox’s Ferris maintained that that KTTV only is obligated to deal with the numbers in the last official census in 1980, which he said put the Latino workforce figure at closer to 24%.

As further evidence of what he regards as KTTV’s poor performance in the hiring and promotion of Latinos, Huerta cited an internal memo written by staff attorneys for Metromedia, the station’s former owner, informing Channel 11 executives in early 1984 that they were placing an FCC letter of admonishment in the station’s public file due to the “ ‘apparent lack of attention’ to recruitment and employement of qualified Hispanic employees.”

The memo warned that the commission had “intended to impose detailed employment reporting conditions upon the station,” but were dissuaded from doing so by Metromedia attorneys. It urged KTTV’s managers to “develop a specific plan to increase the representaiton of Hispanic persons in the KTTV work force.”

Ferris argued that the station has made major improvements since it was acquired by Fox more than two years ago, noting as an example the recent hiring of Augustine Martinez as vice president of finance. He contended that the station was being unfairly blamed for problems it inherited from Metromedia.

“They knew they were inheriting a bad situation (from Metromedia) and it was their obligation to fix it,” Thompson responded. “Anyway, the legal applicability of the commission’s letter of admonishment continues to the present day, regardless of who the licensee is.”

James Shook, supervisory attorney of the FCC’s equal employment opportunities branch, differed only slightly with Thompson’s interpretation. “We haven’t so much tried to make this a point of law, but a point of common sense,” Shook said. “If we have sent a letter of admonishment, and station ownership changes, it’s still part of the station’s history and the new owners should take steps to address the issues raised in the letter.”

Duron of the coalition said that KTTV’s programming is another of the station’s soft spots because it virtually ignores the growing demographic presence of the Latino community in Los Angeles. Ferris denied that the station has ignored the Latino community, saying that KTTV simulcasts its late evening news in Spanish, features Latino issues on its “Midday” talk show and airs programming popular with Latino youths.

An outcome to the challenge won’t come soon. It probably will take a minimum of five years for the case to wend its way through the FCC and appeals to federal courts--and, as the KHJ-TV Channel 9 case illustrates, it could take far longer.

In 1965, Fidelity Television, a local investment group, challenged RKO General for the Channel 9 license on programming grounds. But before that matter could be settled, the FCC brought action against GenCorp, RKO General’s parent company, for alleged bribes of public officials to operate the CBS affiliate in Boston, and last year an FCC administrative law judge deemed the company unfit to run any of its 14 television and radio stations.

Thompson argued that KTTV could face similar questions about its parent company if 20th Century Fox Film Corp. is convicted on “block booking” charges made against the studio last month in a New York federal grand jury indictment. Fox has denied the allegations.