An Experiment in Unity : Backers of Radio Unica say the U.S. market is ready for a 24-hour Spanish-language network.

Next month’s launch of Radio Unica, the nation’s only 24-hour Spanish-language radio network, may go a long way toward determining the immediate future of Spanish-language radio in the U.S.

If it succeeds, that achievement will belie the common assumption that the Latino market is hopelessly fragmented along geographical, cultural and political lines. But if it fails, as similar experiments have, the phenomenal growth of Spanish-language radio in recent years could be stunted, leaving regional powers to fill a void that might better be served by a unifying national voice.

The stakes are high, concedes Radio Unica Chairman Joaquin Blaya. But then, he insists, so are the potential payoffs.

“We believe this is an idea whose time has come,” he says.

And Blaya speaks from experience. As a former top executive with both Univision and Telemundo--the only national Spanish-language television networks--his innovation and guidance inspired programming that won more than 30 Emmy Awards. Along the way he helped develop such wildly popular shows as “Sevcec,” “Sabado Gigante,” “Premio Lo Nuestro/Latin Music Awards” and “Cristina” and played a major role in founding the cable news service TeleNoticas.

“In general, you could say that I’ve had a pretty good track record,” Blaya says. “That’s not to say that I’m going to be successful and I’m going to have in my hand the pulse of the Hispanic market forever. [But] you have to look at my history.”

Which is undoubtedly what executives with Mexico’s Cadena Radio Centro and the New York investment bank Warburg Pincus Ventures LP did before agreeing to sink tens of millions of dollars--no one will say exactly how much--into the project a little more than a year ago.

Getting the network off the ground, however, has proved much more difficult than Blaya and his partners had hoped. Last summer, when Blaya began rounding up affiliates, he floated a Nov. 1 launch date. That was later pushed back a month and then, in November, another month’s postponement was added because of delays in the construction of Radio Unica’s Miami headquarters. So the fledgling network, which owns or controls stations in Miami, Los Angeles, San Antonio, San Francisco and Houston, is scheduled to begin broadcasting Jan. 5 on 32 affiliates, including local outlet KVCA-AM (670).

Radio Unica’s association with tiny KVCA is indicative of the problems the network has faced trying to build credibility atop the wreckage of past failures in national Spanish-language radio programming. Although Los Angeles boasts the nation’s largest Spanish-speaking population, it’s a market the network will try to reach with a 5,000-watt Simi Valley-based signal that can rarely be picked up north of the Cahuenga Pass. And though applications to boost KVCA’s signal are pending before the Federal Communications Commission, for the time being the network will have to write off most of Southern California’s Spanish-speaking population.

The failure of previous attempts at building a national network in Spanish has been blamed on the widely disparate nature of the 27 million Latinos in the U.S., many of whom share the same language but have little else in common.

“Spanish markets are different,” says analyst Allen S. Klein of Media Research Graphics. “This is not a problem you would have syndicating a Howard Stern or a Rush Limbaugh.”

But it’s a problem that’s surmountable.

“Differences are not as important as similarities,” says Adriana Grillet, Radio Unica’s vice president for affiliate relations. “It’s just details, the differences. We are all Latinos. We have the same passions for families, for customs, for culture. It’s the same roots.”

In addition, Blaya points to his tremendous success in television as proof that programming for a national audience can work. And the way it’s packaged, he says, is as important as the content.

“We need to make a distinction between a true network or things that are called a network,” he says. “Univision is a network. NBC is a network. ABC is a network. That means you carry your programming 24 hours a day through the nation.

“The other efforts were mainly done with vignettes, which in New York will run at 10 a.m., in L.A. at 5 p.m., in San Francisco it should run but didn’t.”

To combat that, Blaya has insisted affiliate stations carry his programming, as scheduled, for a minimum of eight hours a day. In the short term, the centerpiece of that programming will be Radio Unica’s exclusive coverage of soccer’s World Cup, a draw Blaya figures will double the network’s list of affiliates by June.

Aside from sports and a three-hour morning news block, however, Radio Unica’s offerings are heavily talk-oriented. Telemundo’s Pedro Sevcec will reprise his television talk show, and there will be a daily call-in program dealing with immigration issues, two shows about personal relationships and a 60-minute segment on health. Most of the shows will originate from Miami, but some entertainment-oriented programs will be done in the network’s Los Angeles studios and at least 3 1/2 hours of daily programming will come from Mexico.

“This is the first long-format, live, true network,” says Blaya, who promises a five-year commitment. “We are not inventing the genre of talk radio or news, but what makes this different is that . . . it is live throughout the nation. Where we see our niche, basically, is that there are more and more national advertisers that want the efficiencies of the network, of a national buy like they do with television. And I feel there is an opportunity there for a national medium of radio.

“I don’t think I am ahead of my time. I think I am utilizing some of the same logic and knowledge that made me very successful in television.”

*

Pulling the Plug: The arrival of Radio Unica will mark the demise of one of the more interesting experiments in local radio in recent years. When Lotus Communications agreed to lease its KVCA signal to the network, it pulled the plug on Radio Centro America, a 10-month-old station aimed exclusively at a tiny--but rapidly growing--percentage of a minority community.

The station, meant to appeal to Central Americans, who account for about 1 in 5 Latinos in Los Angeles, featured tropical music and frequent news updates from Central America. But saddled with a weak signal and a shoestring budget, it never registered a blip on the quarterly Arbitron ratings.

“I think it’s a real loss,” says Jim Kalmenson, vice president and general manager of KVCA as well as KWKW-AM (1330). “I think somebody will fill that void pretty quickly because it’s a great market. And the Central Americans kind of deserve an outlet.”

Although rumors of the station’s transfer have been circulating for weeks, Kalmenson didn’t officially tell the staff until late last month. He’s trying to find other jobs for KSCA’s five full-time employees.