More Radio Stations Say Adios to English

Last month’s high-profile switch by KSCA-FM (101.9) from English-language pop to Spanish-language music brought home to a lot of listeners the phenomenon of the Southland’s rapidly changing radio market.

Suddenly, you could tune in to 17 Spanish outlets out of 82 stations in Los Angeles and Orange counties--the largest and fastest growing Spanish radio market in the nation.

Forty years ago, there was one full-time Spanish-language station here, KWKW-AM (1330). A decade ago, there were half a dozen--none of them major players.

Now two of the region’s 10 highest-rated stations are Spanish-language, and next month yet another English-language station will make the switch: KWNK-AM (670), a Simi Valley sports-talk station, is going Spanish--and will try to differentiate itself from the pack with a focus that’s Central American, instead of Mexican, presenting a potpourri of news, music and sports.

“As long as there’s enough advertising support, people will continue to convert stations to Spanish,” says Richard Heftel, president and general manager of Heftel Broadcasting Corp.’s three Los Angeles stations, which include KSCA and the market’s top-rated outlet, KLVE-FM (107.5). “Spanish stations will continue to grow until you see as much fragmentation as there is on the English side. . . . I think we’re rapidly approaching it. It’s not as simple as it once was, for sure.”

Fueling the trend, industry executives say, is the growth of the Latino population: now 38.6% of Los Angeles and Orange counties and fast approaching 40%. Meanwhile, a general upturn in radio fortunes has allowed Spanish-language broadcasters to invest in better signals--and in FM.

“People ask me what my biggest selling tool is to the Spanish market, and it’s the census,” says Kathleen Bohan, director of marketing and research for Katz Hispanic Media, which places national advertising in Spanish media outlets. “Every time fresh information comes in, it recalibrates everything.”

Before the 1990s, Bohan says, Spanish radio was “predominantly sleepy little AM stations. [Soon] traditional broadcasters were making more and more money, and investing more into the product. What happened in the general market 25 years ago with the whole music migration over to FM has really picked up speed in the Hispanic market.”

While Spanish-language stations in the early years all featured variations of traditional Mexican music and later experimented with other forms of Latin American music, the growth in outlets has forced them to seek out different niches. They now mirror their English-language counterparts, with stations specializing in talk, or sports and talk, plus a much wider range of Latino music, including rock.

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KTNQ-AM (1020), the third Heftel station here, last year shed its Mexican regional music format for news, talk and sports. As an AM station, it was having difficulty competing in the music arena with the richer-sounding FMs. “We have better numbers now as a news/talk station than we had in its final days as a music station,” Heftel says. “KLAX had been our strongest competitor.”

Indeed. KLAX-FM (97.9) had begun airing Mexican regional music in 1992--but with a difference. Transplanting hip banda music from across the border--a derivative of German polka-style music, pumped up with electronic instruments--it leaped to the top of the Arbitron ratings that fall.

“It just exploded,” recalls owner Raul Alarcon Jr. And it put Spanish radio on Los Angeles’ map--the first time a Spanish-language station had topped the local charts.

KLAX has since ceded that spot to KLVE, which airs adult contemporary music, with a sound that media buyer Bohan likens to English-language KOST-FM (103.5), but with pumped-up energy. It has been No. 1 since the fall of 1995.

Such is the trend toward narrowcasting that Howard Kalmenson, whose Lotus Communications owns 20 stations nationally, points to the potential he sees in KWNK catering exclusively to a Central American audience.

“Use your imagination,” he says, “750,000 to 1 million Central Americans waiting for their own station. ‘Radio Centro America.’ Some news, some music, Central American soccer teams, the whole megillah.”

KWKW’s debut as the nation’s first full-time Spanish radio station came in the mid-1950s under then-owner William J. Beaton, who later founded Glendale station KIEV-AM (870). According to Fred Beaton, KIEV’s board chairman, his father was persuaded by Latino employees that it would make sound economic sense.

A former KWKW sales manager turned KALI into the second full-time Spanish station around 1960. The next key breakthrough came in 1975, when brothers Jose, Elias and Julio Liberman bought KLVE and made it the nation’s first Spanish FM station.

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“Spanish stations were always underrated,” says Julio Liberman. “Even in 1975. That was one of our biggest fights with the [advertising] agencies. After 1980, Arbitron started giving better weight to the [Latino] population, and the growth was tremendous.”

A station doesn’t have to produce giant numbers to survive. Take 20-year-old Ontario-based KNSE-AM (1510). “We have a very good relationship with the local Spanish business community,” notes Malu Hernandez, general manager. “We have a very high presence at local events, whether it’s Cinco de Mayo or the big parade in Ontario on the Fourth of July.”

Radio analysts surmise that there is still room for growth in the Spanish station market.

Consider that $500 million worth of advertising is sold each year on Los Angeles radio. Spanish-language stations account for about $80 million of that--less than their 20% share of audience. “A few years ago, the advertising was probably $40 million. So it’s coming up, and coming up very rapidly,” says radio analyst Allen Klein.

Bohan says “the bulk of the [Latino] population is much younger than the general market population. If the [Los Angeles] market is 38% Hispanic, when you start looking at your 18-34 demos, it goes up to 40-something [percent]. When you get down to your teen demo, guess what? That’s 50% Hispanic. The Anglo or general market is older, and the Hispanic market is younger. In terms of advertising, it means that the Hispanic market is becoming more and more important.”

As for listeners, there’s anecdotal evidence--if not wishful thinking--in a potential crossover of English-speaking Latinos to Spanish radio.

Steve Humphries, western region vice president for Spanish Broadcasting, says Spanish-language radio managements have begun to realize that there are “second-, third- and fourth-generation Hispanics who speak English, who have incomes, who have money to spend and are viable listeners. So we started catering to them.

“Sure there has been population growth from immigration,” he continues, “but the true growth has come from people who are listening to general market radio and coming back to Spanish radio. Bilingual Hispanics are coming back to their roots.”

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And yet radio is a medium ever in flux. In February, Castro’s El Dorado Communications Inc. signed a letter of intent with Cox Radio to sell KRTO-FM (98.3) for $19 million. Whether it will stay Spanish is uncertain. And KXMG-AM (1540)--which last week was tentatively sold to One-on-One Sports Inc. by Spanish Broadcasting System Inc., is “highly likely” to go to an English-language sports format, says a source close to the deal.

Meanwhile, KWIZ-AM (1480), an Orange County station that used to be Spanish, began broadcasting in Vietnamese and Chinese in January, while its sister station, KWIZ-FM (96.7), switched from English to Spanish.

“We respect and want to grow the Asian side of our business,” explains KWIZ general manager Andrew Mars. “But frankly there are more Latinos than Asians in Orange County. We felt we had to appeal to the larger group, and compete with the FM stations.”