Building a Station by Hits and Starts

When David L. Haymore speaks, people listen. If they’re in the same room, they really don’t have a choice.

That’s because Haymore doesn’t so much speak as he enthuses. “Excitement” and “energy” are his two favorite words, and he imbues them with a level of sincerity that would make Will Rogers blush.

The current focus of his ardor is radio station KSSE-FM (97.5), a Riverside-based Spanish-language outlet that first hit the airwaves four months ago. Boasting a tight, youth-oriented playlist and a logo seemingly borrowed from baseball’s Houston Astros, Haymore’s “Super Estrella” bills itself as the nation’s first Spanish-language contemporary hits station.

“If it’s a hit,” the station general manager gushes, “it hits our air.”

When Excl Communications, a San Jose-based, Spanish-language broadcasting company, bought KSSE, it assumed a dial position once held by KVAR-FM and an audience once claimed by Radio Ritmo, KRTQ-FM (98.3); but in neither case do they figure to be a tough act to follow. KVAR, known as Radio Variedades, never caught on because its eclectic playlist was too scattered to draw a loyal following, while Radio Ritmo’s tight rotation of alternative rock and rock en espanol was on the air just a year before the station was sold to Cox Communications, which converted to English-language programming.

So the biggest challenge confronting Haymore and programming director Nestor Rocha was finding a format that would succeed in the long shadow cast by Spanish-language giant KLVE-FM (107.5), the dominant force here.

“You have to have a niche that you service very well and you’re consistent with,” Haymore says. “When you come from a format like Variedades, [the key] is consistency. Familiarity. So that when listeners tune in . . . they know what they’re going to get.”

What they get on KSSE is a limited playlist of music by artists such as Fey, Mana, the Barrio Boyz and Shakira. And that’s about all they get. There’s very little chatter to interfere with the music. In fact, the station was broadcasting a month before its first on-air personality, afternoon drive-time deejay Irma Covarrubias, signed on.

This month, Rocha became KSSE’s second regular on-air host; the rest of the time, in-studio deejays silently play music, occasionally airing taped testimonials from listeners or “bumps” and station IDs recorded by Sylvia Villagran, a peppy former KLVE personality who is now the voice of KSSE.

“The music is the product when you get right down to it,” Haymore says. “And you develop personalities that contribute and complement the product.”

Yet while Haymore seems to have product packaging down, distribution is something of a problem. Although KSSE has a massive 72,000-watt signal and broadcasts from a suite of offices along Wilshire Boulevard near Koreatown, its license is in Riverside. So while the station can be heard as far east as Baker and as far south as San Diego, it can’t be picked up north of the Cahuenga Pass in Hollywood.

Despite that, Haymore says tracking surveys show the station has made inroads among the all-important 18-34 age group for which he was aiming.

Diversity Update: Haymore, 38, who came to Los Angeles from Las Vegas, has spent nearly 15 years working in Spanish-language radio, a span that has seen the medium blossom from something of a novelty into a major player in the news and entertainment industries.

“In the past,” he says, “people would refer to Spanish as a format. Well, in general-market radio you don’t have an English format. English is a language, not a format. Spanish is a language, not a format. What has evolved is the understanding that Spanish is a language and there are a variety of formats.”