Talking Sports, en Espanol : KTNQ-AM offers L.A.’s longest-running Spanish-language sports talk show.

Felix is on the line and he sounds homicidal. The day before, he had watched the Salvadoran soccer team get pummeled by Mexico, all but ending his homeland’s bid for a berth in next year’s World Cup. Now Felix is confident he’s uncovered a plot linking the sordid officiating to an international campaign against El Salvador.

Hipolito Gamboa patiently tries reason, then subtle ridicule to talk Felix off the ledge before tag-team partner Rolando Gonzalez drops talk radio’s ultimate trump card.

“And now,” he cuts in exasperatedly, “let’s go to the news.”

So ends another segment of “Hablando de Deportes,” where football is a sport but futbol is a passion. The show, which airs daily on (1020), recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, making it the longest-running Spanish-language sports talk program in Los Angeles. It’s also one of the most successful in any language, ranking second among AM shows in its weekday 5-9 p.m. time slot. (The show, with different hosts, also airs from 5-8 p.m. on Saturdays and from noon-8 p.m. on Sundays).

Yet while sports talk is a painfully simple format to describe, explaining why KTNQ has made it succeed is less obvious.

“Gee, I wish I knew,” says David Gleason, KTNQ’s program director. “I think there are a combination of things. Longevity and consistency, for example. We have a commitment.”

And they also have Gonzalez, an internationally respected sportscaster who has anchored “Hablando de Deportes” since its inception. The Guatemalan-born Gonzalez has covered six World Cups, three Olympic Games, a Pan American Games and a number of other major sporting events in his 36 years as a broadcaster. And he’s shown no signs of slowing down: In addition to hosting the four-hour weeknight shows at KTNQ, he also serves as the Spanish-language radio voice of Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Galaxy as well a commentator for Fox Sports Americas.

Gonzalez, 55, shares his KTNQ studio with Gamboa, a 37-year-old from Mexico. The two form a pleasing pair, with the deliberate, soft-spoken Gamboa balancing the impulsive Gonzalez, whose quick speech and the exaggerated way he trills his Rs have won him the nickname “El Veloz” (speedy).

Together, Gamboa and Gonzalez entertain their audience with a nightly mix of international sports news; phone or taped interviews with coaches, athletes and the like; and calls from listeners. For the most part, the subject of each segment is soccer, although boxing is also popular. Don’t expect to hear much about golf, though.

“In nearly 11 years,” Gonzalez says in Spanish, “I’ve had exactly one golf question.” Even chess, with two questions, has done better than that.

Gonzalez’s favorite sport is basketball “because it’s very emotional,” he says. “But,” he adds, “I’m interested in all sports. I have to read and be knowledgeable in all sports. It’s really ugly when someone asks me a question and I have to be quiet.”

And the show can get eclectic at times. In addition to soccer and boxing, whichever major professional sport is in season generally sparks some calls. Right now, for example, the major league baseball playoffs are hot.

The success of KTNQ’s sports talk has inspired a number a rivals over the years, the most recent being KKHJ-AM (930), whose five-man talk show has floundered since its debut a year ago. Originally assigned a four-hour slot from 3-7 p.m. each weekday, the show was recently cut in half, eliminating the last two hours when it went head to head with KTNQ.

Still, KKHJ’s program director, Fidel Fausto, remains committed to the show, saying it will take time for his station to make a dent in the market.

“We know that we have to wait years for the people to realize that we have good sports shows on the air too,” he said.

But while Fausto speaks respectfully of the competition, it’s obvious he didn’t copy it. KTNQ’s Gonzalez and Gamboa are thoughtful and informative in contrast to KKHJ’s team of Fernando Gonzalez, Mario Lechuga, John Laguna, Samuel Jacobo and Jose “Pepe” Mantilla, who spend most of their time trying to talk over one another. As a result, the rare insightful comment is often lost in the shouting.

“I have respect for them,” Rolando Gonzalez says of the KKHJ quintet. “But to have a discussion you need to have, first of all, confidence in what you’re saying. So if you have a discussion between two people, one of them has to be correct.

“But if you get five or six, it turns into un mercado del pueblo that nobody can understand. With us, you get information.”

For Gleason, however, it’s a matter of trust as much as information.

“A sportscaster, unlike a newscaster, is someone you look to for guidance on how you should feel about a certain player or event,” he says. “We do the same thing in the same schedule. And we’ve been doing this a long, long time.

“Stability counts with the listener. With other stations it’s mostly promises.”

Talk of the Town: When KWKW-AM (1330) switched from regional Mexican music to an all-talk format in August, General Manager Jim Kalmenson was sure he’d made the right move. Now he has some numbers to back that claim.

Although the station expected to lose ratings points in the transition, the summer Arbitron figures showed that KWKW has nearly doubled its audience since making the switch. KWKW drew a 1.2% of the audience in September, the first time the station has polled better than 1.0% “in several months,” according to Kalmenson.

Monthly ratings are not always true barometers of a station’s popularity, however, because they involve small samples that can be skewed by a number of factors. Still, Kalmenson argues, rapid growth so soon after a format change is generally good news.

“Either it’s a really positive, strong move and it’s attracting attention faster than we expected or . . . there are flukes,” he said. “I may be a little premature in being excited. [But] this is the most positive I’ve felt about anything in a long time.”

Guiding Principles: Southern California’s burgeoning Spanish-language radio market has become so big, it now has its own magazine. The Los Angeles Radio Guide, which for three years has published a bimonthly issue devoted to the local radio business, issued its first Spanish-language edition last month.

Approximately 20,000 issues of the 24-page guide were distributed to record stores and Spanish-language businesses in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

Publisher Shireen Alafi said the idea of a Spanish-language publication was discussed a year ago but became a necessity this summer because of “the dominance of Spanish radio in L.A.”

The first issue included features on hyper-popular KSCA-FM (101.9) personality Renan Almendarez Coello and radio pioneer Roberto Iglesias as well as a program lineup for Southern California’s Spanish-language radio stations and a breakdown of the spring Arbitron ratings. What it didn’t include was much paid advertising.

“It’s a community service,” said Alafi with a shrug, adding that the English-language guide has yet to make a profit. “[This] looks more auspicious than the English-language edition. We’re going to try it for three or four months and see how it works.”

For more information on the Los Angeles Radio Guide en Espanol, call (213) 469-3468 or (213) 360-7011, or write to Los Angeles Radio Guide en Espanol, P.O. Box 3680, Santa Monica, CA 90408.