Spanish-Language Radio Largely Tunes Mayor’s Race Out

The nights of Spanish-language radio float above waves of romantic love songs. The days bob on the choppy waters of salsa, rock en espanol and ranchera. In the early mornings, listeners ride along in musical bliss, sometimes catching a few headlines, or an astrology reading, or scores from big soccer games.

Far away, on other frequencies, on the front pages of newspapers and in the lead stories of local television newscasts, energy and intensity continue to build around the June 5 mayoral election between former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa and City Atty. James K. Hahn.

But on Spanish-language radio this mayor’s race unfolds in near silence--a tribute to the curious nature of the medium and its audience, or at least the audience that radio executives and others believe is tuning in.

“It’s for a made-in-the-U.S.A audience who can relate to a made-in-the-U.S.A. history [about] the first Latino in so many years who has a chance to become mayor,” said Ruben G. Rumbaut, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and author of “Legacy: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation.”

“The person who immigrated from Mexico five or 10 years ago has other things on his/her mind,” he added. “What’s going on here is not their narrative. Their children’s narrative may find the race relevant, but the adult immigrant--his gaze is elsewhere.”

And it is that gaze--of the adult immigrant with his eyes still on Mexico--that Spanish-language radio in Los Angeles is most determined to arrest.

For the most part, these stations’ listeners are workers who live on the edge. More than half of those who tune in to the top-rated Spanish-language radio station have an annual household income of less than $30,000, according to Arbitron, which measures audiences.

In the view of station executives and academics, those are the listeners whose hearts remain in their homeland, and neither the Latino heritage nor the Spanish-language skills of Villaraigosa is enough to make his race for City Hall resonate.

“They always feel like they’ve left their real country behind and are here to make a living,” Rumbaut said. “So, when someone is running for mayor of Los Angeles, so what? But if someone were running for mayor of their hometown in Mexico, that might have more interest.”

Neither Villaraigosa nor Hahn sees Spanish-language radio as a rich outreach tool. They have both appeared on various shows, or called in, but they have not spent one advertising cent to reach the listeners.

Instead, they are reaching out to better-educated, wealthier Latinos who are tuned in to English-language radio. They are also heavily covered by the Spanish-language TV stations, including KMEX Channel 34, which is the top-rated station in the market, in any language.

From a political perspective, the absence of interest in the mayoral campaigns from Spanish-language radio is surprising, in part because that medium reaches such a large and growing slice of Los Angeles.

“Each of those new stations have garnered ratings of their own, without costing its competitors much of the audience,” said Mary Beth Garber, president of the Southern California Broadcasters Assn., a nonprofit marketing group. “They’ve increased the amount of listening of Spanish-speakers in the market.”

What’s more, Spanish-speakers listen to an average of 24 hours of radio a week, whereas non-Spanish speakers tune in about 21 hours weekly, according to Arbitron.

However, radio executives are convinced that Spanish-speaking listeners want to hear entertainment, not political debate.

“Here, the talk shows just don’t get ratings,” said Humberto Luna, who was the deejay of a whimsical, music-driven morning drive time show until this week. The show was a “trimulcast,” heard on KRCD-FM (103.9), KRCV-FM (98.3) and KTNQ-AM (1020), all of which are properties of the largest owner of Spanish-language radio stations in the country, Hispanic Broadcasting Corp.

The popular personalities on local Spanish-language radio are deejays, not pundits or discussion leaders. Even though L.A. has the second largest Latino population in the country, it has only one local talk show on Spanish-language radio, KWKW-AM (1330).

This winter, KWKW launched a weekly two-hour program titled “Si Usted Fuera El Alcalde?” (“If You Were Mayor?”) with Antonio Gonzalez as the host. On a show earlier this month, Gonzalez asked one caller how she would handle the dangerous freeway car chases by police officers. He asked another woman what she would do about pardoning criminals. But during a break, he admitted it was frustrating to know that KWKW satisfies a small subniche of enthusiastic voters.

The Honduran-born Gonzalez, 75, said most of L.A.’s Spanish-language listeners are economic refugees rather than political refugees. They came here looking for a paycheck, he said, comparing Los Angeles’ Spanish-language radio audience to Miami’s, where the Cuban exile community and their relatives can immerse themselves in any one of the many anti-communist talk stations.

In Los Angeles, by contrast, audiences have shrugged their shoulders at talk radio and rewarded music-driven stations with consistently high ratings. The demands of the market have squeezed even purists, including KWKW management. As ratings dipped slightly last year, the station modified its focus. Gonzalez launched a consumer rights program, and he limited his political dialogue to the weekly mayor program.

“We used to be more political, and now we’re more public service,” said Jim Kalmenson, KWKW’s general manager. “And ratings have gone up.”