Radio Korea Lands a New Spot on the Dial
After more than seven months of searching, Radio Korea has finally found a new home--and not a moment too soon.
On Jan. 1, the news and talk station’s current signal, KBLA-AM (1580), will go Spanish as it becomes part of the Miami-based Radio Unica network, and for a time it looked as if that switch was going to silence one of the two Korean-language radio voices in Southern California.
But Wednesday, Radio Korea reached a one-year agreement with Pasadena-based Multicultural Radio to begin broadcasting 20 hours a day on 10,000-watt KYPA-AM (1230) beginning Jan. 1. Multicultural Radio, which owns the signal and rents out its air time, will run an English-language alternative-music show, “Anti-Radio,” from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays.
“I’m totally happy with this,” said Radio Korea President Janghee Lee, whose programming has been on KBLA, a 50,000-watt powerhouse signal, since 1992. “The antenna is located in the very heart of Koreatown, so Koreatown will be very happy with the signal.”
The center of the Korean business community in Los Angeles, Koreatown is a 10-mile-square area just west of downtown, bounded roughly by Santa Monica Boulevard to the north, Pico Boulevard to the south, Hoover Street to the east and Crenshaw Boulevard to the west.
But surveys conducted by Arbitron, which tracks listenership in the Southland market, suggests much of Radio Korea’s audience lives outside that area, in places such as Glendale, Orange County and the San Gabriel Valley, where KYPA’s signal is faint.
Southern California’s only other Korean-language radio station is 5-year-old “FM Seoul” (93.5), which simulcasts from Redondo Beach on KFOX-FM and from Ontario on KREA-FM, giving it a much greater reach than Radio Korea.
Radio Unica, the nation’s only Spanish-language radio network, purchased KBLA from the Sinclair Broadcast Group of Baltimore for $27 million in May, but Lee had a contractual option that allowed him to continue broadcasting on that frequency until the end of the year--an option he chose to exercise despite a lucrative buyout offer from Radio Unica, which also promised to help Radio Korea find a new station.
For Radio Unica, which will mark its first anniversary on the air Jan. 5, the move to KBLA is important because its current Southern California signal, Simi Valley-based KVCA-AM (670), reaches just 20% of the market. KBLA will give the network blanket coverage of the nation’s largest Spanish-language market.
On the programming side, Radio Unica recently obtained the rights to Cristina Saralegui’s short radio commentaries, “Cristina Opina,” which are currently aired in syndication in dozens of Spanish-speaking countries. Saralegui is the host of a highly rated talk show on the Univision television network.
