Iranian Anger on AM Dial

As dozens of immigrant men were being jailed during a special INS registration, a small Persian-language radio station became a town plaza of the airwaves for friends and relatives -- a gathering place for the frustrated, the angry and the scared.

The station, KIRN-AM (670), canceled its programming to focus on the registration, which some callers likened to the internment of people of Japanese ancestry during World War II. The station spearheaded a protest rally outside the Federal Building in Los Angeles. It took calls from jailed immigrants.

To some, the coverage bordered on shock radio, stirring anger among immigrants. But to many, it marked a coming of age for Hollywood-based KIRN, proving that a small, low-wattage station could be a powerful conduit to an ethnic community searching for answers and a forum.

“The station is a kind of town hall,” said Navid Sharafatian, a listener. “It became a clearinghouse of information. There is Farsi television and other radio, but 670 has become a meeting place for the Iranian community.”

Station representatives said they preempted programming to talk about the detention of certain Middle Eastern immigrants because they wanted to be the prime source of news for the Iranian community.

“We are in a major market, but the Iranian community is a small town and we are the meeting place,” said John Paley, station manager. “If a kid loses his dog, we are on the story. To be on top of [the detentions] was a natural.”

Usually Homespun

Typically, the station buzzes with hominess. KIRN talk show host Sharzad Ardalan, for instance, spends an hour a week taking calls from listeners looking for lost friends. She recently hooked up a caller with a long-lost schoolmate, whom the caller could identify only by her first name. The schoolmate called in to the show from Israel.

When Persian pop diva Googosh, silenced for two decades by Islamic fundamentalists, couldn’t make her fall concert in Los Angeles because she was not granted a visa on time, she apologized to her fans on KIRN.

KIRN is the brainchild of radio executive Howard Kalmenson, who bought two Spanish-language radio stations in the 1960s because he sensed a growing market in Los Angeles. Kalmenson, who now owns 30 stations through Lotus Communications, used the same logic when he saw an area known as “Little Tehran” on the Westside.

After the 1979 revolution, the largest population of Iranian emigrants in the world settled in Southern California. Though census figures say slightly more than 101,000 people in the five-county area are of Iranian ancestry, community leaders insist that the number is closer to 600,000.

Kalmenson’s research showed no major media broadcasting in Persian, except for a few hours of radio and television on other stations and radio programs on closed-circuit broadcasts that could be heard only by those who have adapters.

The station cranked up in August 1999 with no advertising and “has been more successful than our wildest dreams,” said Paley. For the most part, the advertising is local, ranging from Mercedes Benz of Laguna Niguel to Flames Restaurant in Glendale to Alef Market in Beverly Hills. On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, real estate, banking and medical firms fill the airwaves with infomercials.

Shows focus on maintaining traditions and thriving in a new culture, including live Persian coverage of Laker games. Listeners call in with praise and criticism as if they were phoning relatives.

Farhang Holakouee, an American-trained family counselor, runs a call-in show from 3 to 5 p.m. in which he may spend as much as 30 minutes with a single caller. Much of the discussion revolves around cultural adaptation and the differences between immigrant parents and their American-born children.

On Dec. 16 it changed, and his show was dominated by calls from men jailed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. The INS had asked immigrants with visitor status to register by that date. But when many came forth voluntarily for fingerprinting, photographs and interviews, they were taken into custody because their visas had expired, even though many were processing their paperwork to gain U.S. residency.

The Iranian community was outraged at the detentions, feeling that the practice implied they were terrorists and that the U.S. could unfairly deport some to a country they left decades ago as children. By midday, KIRN was flooded with calls.

Some Disappointed

Some Iranian Americans were disappointed by the station’s nonstop coverage. Massoud Akhari, a volunteer with the Orange County-based group International Harmony, called the programming “shock radio.”

“The radio should not have encouraged a protest in front of a federal building,” said Akhari, who thought public protests were in poor form.

“The appropriate thing would have been to go to the INS and speak calmly about what is happening.”

But many listeners found common ground by dialing in KIRN after the INS registration.

“Everybody is listening day and night to find out what is going on,” said Soheila Jonoubi, an attorney who helped lead the protest outside the INS offices. “It was a way that no one had to go through this alone.”