He’s the boogeyman of morning radio

Hip-hop station KPWR-FM (105.9) continued its reign over Southland radio, entering its third straight year as the area’s top-rated outlet, while frenetic Spanish-language host Renan Almendarez Coello regained his throne as king of the market’s morning shows and pulled his station up with him to new heights, according to numbers released Tuesday by the Arbitron radio ratings service.

This spring, KPWR maintained the 5% share of local audience it had in the winter and held on to its top spot in the ratings, where it has perched since the spring of 2002.

Coello’s home, KLAX-FM (97.9), saw the most dramatic results in the spring ratings survey, which spanned April 1 through June 23. The station rocketed from a 3% share of the audience in the winter to 4.7% in the spring, shooting it from 10th to second place overall.

“Renan lifted the station,” said Bill Tanner, executive vice president of programming at Spanish Broadcasting System, which owns KLAX. “As go the mornings, so goes the station, and it was never more true than today.”

Coello left his longtime home, KSCA-FM (101.9), in March after a bitter dispute with management over grievances that included pay for his supporting cast. Known as “El Cucuy de la manana,” or “the morning boogeyman,” Coello began dominating morning ratings almost as soon as he took over a.m. drive time at KSCA in 1997, until he left for the more leisurely schedule of an afternoon show in February 2003.

KLAX hired him after KSCA suspended him for an on-air rant against management and returned him to mornings on March 22 -- where he immediately shot to No. 1 in the market among Spanish-language hosts, according to the winter ratings. Since then, he has continued his ascendance and now leads all morning hosts by a wide margin.

KLAX’s morning show finished ninth in the winter, with 3.2% of the audience. Coello more than doubled that figure, boosting it to 7% in the spring.

“The size of this win is enormous,” Tanner said. “It certainly does validate Renan as the premier Los Angeles radio personality. He’s a one-of-a-kind talent.”

Bill Handel, morning host at talk station KFI-AM (640), saw a big increase -- from 5% of the audience last winter to 5.8% this spring survey -- but he was still no match for Coello. Though Handel dropped from the top spot to No. 2 overall, he remained the area’s top-rated English-language morning host, outpacing a surging Howard Stern on KLSX-FM (97.1). Stern, the self-proclaimed “king of all media,” jumped from fourth to third in the morning, increasing his audience share from 4.2% to 5.2%, buoyed by attention over his feuds with the Federal Communications Commission and Republican lawmakers over indecency.

In addition to chronicling Coello’s success, the spring ratings period was also the first full survey with Ryan Seacrest as morning host at KIIS-FM (102.7), which hired him in February to replace Rick Dees. (Dees’ contract wasn’t renewed after 22 years with the station.) But the ubiquitous host of TV’s “American Idol” and “On Air With Ryan Seacrest” lost audience share for KIIS: Seacrest garnered 2.9% of the morning audience, tied for seventh place, down from the winter ratings period when KIIS’ morning show was tied for fifth with 3.6%. Seacrest took over for Dees on Feb. 22, about two-thirds of the way through the quarter.

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Radio Ratings

The area’s Top 25 stations and their average share of audience, as measured by Arbitron for the spring months compared with the previous three-month period.

*--* Current Last Quarter 1 KPWR-FM 5.0 5.0 2 KLAX-FM 4.7 3.0 3 KFI-AM 4.5 3.9 4 KROQ-FM 4.4 4.1 5 KOST-FM 3.7 3.3 6 KBUE/KBUA-FM 3.5 2.9 7 KTWV-FM 3.3 3.8 8 KIIS-FM 3.2 3.6 9 KLVE-FM 3.1 3.6 10 KLSX-FM 3.0 2.5 KKBT-FM 3.0 3.1 KRTH-FM 3.0 3.1 13 KABC-AM 2.9 2.4 14 KHHT-FM 2.7 2.6 15 KZLA-FM 2.4 2.2 KRCD/KRCV-FM 2.4 2.3 17 KSSE-FM 2.3 2.2 18 KBIG-FM 2.2 2.0 19 KLOS-FM 2.1 2.4 KYSR-FM 2.1 1.9 KNX-AM 2.1 2.1 22 KJLH-FM 1.9 2.1 KSCA-FM 1.9 2.1 KCBS-FM 1.9 2.3 25 KXOL-FM 1.6 1.7

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The ratings survey covers people 12 and older listening between 6 a.m. and midnight, from April 1 to June 23.