It’s puro Spanglish at this L.A. radio estacion

Gary Soto finally found a radio station that speaks his language -- both of them.

In the classrooms of Los Angeles Community College and at his part-time job slinging fruit drinks at Jamba Juice, the 19-year-old American-born son of Mexican immigrants talks primarily in English. But when hanging out with friends, his English comes and goes in favor of Spanish, which is what he speaks almost exclusively with his parents.

It can all sound fairly complicated -- what language to speak, how much of it, where and when. But KXOL-FM, better known as the newly launched “Latino” 96.3, has apparently figured it out by becoming the first major radio station in Los Angeles to build its programming around the city’s two dominant tongues.

The station’s explosively popular music -- reggaeton, a mix of Spanish and American hip-hop with roots in Puerto Rico, Panama and Jamaica -- and its advertisements run with equal-frequency flips from one language to another. Sometimes the station’s back-and-forth by its disc jockeys comes much faster, even sentence-to-sentence or phrase-by-phrase. It’s not unusual to hear callers intermix their languages as they tell a joke, ask a question or relate a personal story.

“It’s like being at home,” said Soto, who listens to the station usually in his car. “You get English and Spanish and you don’t notice the difference. It all blends together.”

It’s a blend that’s produced astonishing results in the L.A. market ever since the station -- owned by the Miami-based Spanish Broadcasting System Inc. -- changed in late May from a Spanish-only to a bilingual format.

By targeting listeners like Soto, the station doubled its previous ratings, rocketing from 18th to second overall, and ranking first among 12- to 24-year-olds, according to the Arbitron rating service -- a remarkable achievement in one of the nation’s most competitive radio markets.

The ratings, which drew 4.2% of the audience, compared with just 2% under the previous format, also suggested that the station pulled listeners from English-language youth stations such as KPWR-FM (105.9) and Spanish-language ones such as KLVE-FM (107.5).

In the years ahead, as successive generations of American-born children of Spanish-speaking immigrants come of age, other radio stations and other major communication mediums like the Internet and even television are likely to undergo some of the same cultural transformations, say media observers.

“Radio has discovered something Latino consumers ages 12 to 20 know already -- it’s not a matter of Spanish or English, it’s Spanish and English,” said Alex Lopez Negrete, chairman of the Assn. of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, a trade organization based in McLean, Va. “They flip back and forth. It’s what they’re living.”

KXOL’s recent success might never have come if it were not for what the Spanish Broadcasting System Inc. perceived as its failure. L.A.’s crowded Spanish-language radio market, which includes KXOL’s sister station KLAX-FM (97.9), meant ratings for the station’s previous Spanish contemporary format were being eroded.

The old station’s slow rating decline supplied the management with the motivation, and the nerve, to pull off its recent radical makeover.

Last winter, the station’s general manager, David L. Haymore, and its programming director, Pio Ferro, began poring over research about youth trends and demographics for inspiration -- and they found it.

The pair understood the ratings potential given the city’s 4.4 million Latinos ages 12 and older -- a figure that represents 40% of the overall population. But what caught their eye in terms of starting a bilingual station were data showing that a quarter of young Latinos report speaking equally in English and Spanish, and that some 80% are classified as “English capable.”

Further, even those who have only a quarter Latino blood still generally identify themselves as fully Latino.

“We’ve watched Hispanic young people become a dominant market force,” said Haymore. “Call it gut instinct or whatever, but we thought that a bilingual radio station in Los Angeles would not only be the first, but one that would also hit with force.”

They found the music they were looking for in reggaeton, which was breaking onto the edges of the mainstream culture after lumbering for about a decade with only club and underground exposure; station executives believed the hipster musical genre was the smartest way to reach young Latinos.

Though usually performed in Spanish, reggaeton hits are increasingly incorporating all-English or at least part-English lyrics -- a key reason for its growing crossover appeal.

For instance, one of the genre’s biggest stars, Daddy Yankee, didn’t start to get widespread airplay for his hit “Gasolina” until he remixed it with Atlanta rapper Lil Jon. The song is part of Yankee’s album “Barrio Fino,” which was just awarded the best urban music album at this week’s sixth annual Latin Grammy Awards.

“Reggaeton is great party music,” said Soto, who lives in Los Angeles and is studying to be a graphic designer.

Before KXOL began broadcasting stars like Yankee and Tego Calderon -- whose faces are plastered across city billboards and buses, thanks to its latest marketing campaign -- listeners usually had to turn to computer downloading or swapping CDs with friends to hear it.

No more.

“KXOL is an example of radio reacting to something quickly and jumping in on it,” said Perry Michael Simon, news-talk-sports editor of AllAccess.com, an online journal of the radio industry. “Its big ratings also bucks the conventional wisdom that says in heavily Mexican Los Angeles you can only program Spanish-language content from Mexico.”

Every bit as important as the music to its appeal is its bilingual content, argues Haymore, a Salt Lake City native and self-described “gringo” who learned to speak fluent Spanish after living in South America for four years. The station’s half-dozen disc jockeys -- all bilingual -- decide what language to speak, just like their audience.

“The idea is to mirror and reflect the very listener,” said Haymore. “It’s really not a matter of language so much as one of lifestyle.”

The station’s studios and offices, which it shares with KLAX-FM “La Raza,” are in a small high-rise near Century City. Inside, as on the air, a looseness and collegiality seem to prevail as Spanish and English intermingle easily.

“Los Angeles is a Hispanic world, but the young Hispanics speak English, and that’s why this radio station speaks to them,” said Ferro, 32, who was born and raised in Miami. “This station has been built for L.A. by L.A.”

KXOL is not the first in the nation to experiment with the bilingual format. As far back as the late ‘70s and ‘80s, stations in Florida, Texas and California have experimented on a limited basis with the approach. But either the effort or, more likely, the demographics weren’t there to support it, media analysts believe.

About a year ago, Clear Channel Radio, the San Antonio-based radio giant with about 1,200 stations nationwide, began rolling out a new bilingual format, mostly in a limited number of Texas stations.

Called “hurban,” shorthand for “Hispanic urban,” the style, which in addition to some reggaeton also features rap and R&B;, has proved to be a ratings winner.

“This is starting to happen all over the country,” said Lopez Negrete. “It speaks to the soul and culture of the [bilingual] youth who want enough Spanish to make them feel warm and comfy but enough English to make them feel comfortable too.”

With similar brands already in other markets, is KXOL worried about local imitators?

“Who remembers the second person that flew around the world?” said Haymore. “You remember the first.” The station’s bilingual novelty has created its own set of challenges. The first is, because of its relative youth, there simply isn’t a large catalog yet of suitable reggaeton music, which has contributed to the station’s smaller-than-average playlist.

Most Top 40 stations rotate among 250 and 300 songs, but KXOL has only about 150 now.

However, with more pop superstars like R. Kelly and Shakira starting to record their reggaeton mixes -- blending English and Spanish -- a fresh new library is expected to fill up rapidly.

On a practical level, being bilingual has forced the station to examine the language of advertising.

In the first days of the new format, Haymore was asked in what language a car advertisement should run?

Good question, thought Haymore, so he called to ask the client.

“Both,” came the reply.

“Smart,” Haymore remembers thinking. “They get it.”