LOS ANGELES -- On the airwaves of Los Angeles, classic rock is out. The same with Top 40. Hip hop and R & B just don't cut it.
"La musica Mexicana" rules L.A. radio.
For most of the '90s, a Spanish-language station has sat atop the radio ratings in this entertainment capital of the world. But Latino radio's dominance came to the fore in January, when for the first time the numbers showed the three highest-rated Los Angeles radio stations all broadcast in Spanish.
The rise of Spanish-language radio reflects the demographics of the Los Angeles marketplace, where Latinos make up nearly 40 percent of the city's population of 3.5 million.
"L.A. is the northernmost city of Mexico," says Eduardo Cancela, vice president and general manager of the third-rated station, KLAX, more commonly known as "La X" (pronounced as "la equis").
The current leader in the market is Heftel Communications, which owns the two highest-rated stations: KLVE, or K-Love, which plays love songs, is No. 2; and the top-rated station is KSCA, "La Nueva," which played classic rock until Heftel bought it two years ago and transformed it to Spanish. Now its play list is what is described in the industry as "Mexican regional."
"About the best way I could explain it in English is that it's country music for Mexicans," says Richard Heftel, president and general manager of KLVE and KSCA. "The music comes predominantly from the northern side of Mexico, and it's more rural as opposed to Mexico City."
That means "rancheros," which is kind of a Mexican polka, and "mariachi," the traditional Mexican musical style featuring violins and trumpets and impassioned vocals. And "banda," a more recent phenomenon that sounds like mariachi performed by a brass band, with a tuba doing the bass line.
What's new is that Spanish radio, which in years past was confined to low-wattage AM stations, is now cool to listen to.
Pio Ferro, KLVE's program director, says that when he was a teen-ager he would listen to English Top 40 stations. "I had no interest in listening to Spanish music," he says. "Yeah, I'm Hispanic, yeah, I speak Spanish. But do I care? No, it wasn't cool. For Hispanics 15, 20 years ago, maybe even more, the mentality was we moved here and we must change, and we must mix in with the rest of the folks.
"Nowadays," he says, "yes it's OK to like Luis Miguel, to like Alejandro Fernandez, it's OK to be different. It's now cool to turn up their songs in your car and not be embarrassed if somebody pulls up next to you."
It's not just the music that's driving the ratings. As in any general market outlet, the Spanish stations depend on their morning drive-time personalities to attract listeners. The reason KSCA is No. 1 in L.A. is because it has a monster.
"Renan Almendarez Coello," says Heftel as he leans back in his chair, a smile crossing his face. "El Cucuy de la Manana."
"El Cucuy," Almendarez's on-air persona, is a sort of Mexican bogyman, but he's not a frightening character, rather a high-energy, wise-cracking dynamo that Almendarez assumes from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m., six days a week.
Almendarez broadcasts from a tiny studio at Heftel's offices at Hollywood and Vine. With him is his "tropa loca," five assistants who pipe in with other character voices, read the news and do traffic reports. Almendarez plays little music, concentrating more on taking phone calls from listeners and performing skits.
"He is a heavy dose of humor and common sense," says Heftel of the Honduran-born Almendarez. "He is one of the people and he can relate to his listeners."
And he draws listeners. "He's huge," says Cancela, of the competing KLAX, reciting the ratings. "It's the No. 1 morning show in the entire market, by far. Howard Stern does about a 5, and this guy's doing a 10.5."
Down the hall at KLVE, Heftel Broadcasting's No. 2 station, Pepe Barreto holds forth in the mornings. As appropriate as Almendarez's style is for KSCA, which aims for an audience of 20-something males, Barreto's low-key, suave manner fits more with KLVE's listeners, women between 25 and 44.
Barreto, who is also a reporter for the top-rated television news program, also in Spanish, was the top-rated deejay in town before Almendarez came to town.
"People watch Pepe on the news, they see him reporting about important stuff and they trust him," says KLVE program director Ferro. "I mean, if Pepe says it's this way, it's this way because Pepe said it."
The No. 3 station, KLAX, was the first FM station to go Spanish when Miami-based Spanish Communications bought it in August 1992.
"We switched over to a Mexican regional format and the station went through the roof," Cancela says. In four months, KLAX went from 21st in the market to the No. 1 spot, the first time a Spanish station finished first in the competitive Los Angeles radio market.
It remained there until mid-1994, when the team of Bill Tanner and Ferro came from Miami, bringing the sophisticated marketing-research techniques that many of the stations in the general market had used for years. Soon, it was Heftel's KLVE that was No. 1.
In February 1997, Heftel bought KSCA and changed it to Mexican regional, the same format as KLAX. KSCA went to No. 1 with Almendarez and KLAX went to No. 19.
KLAX fought back with a marketing-research group, which advised Cancela that he needed new deejays. The research indicated that about 80 percent of the people surveyed were from the state of Jalisco in Mexico.
"I said, 'Well, what's the capital of Jalisco? Guadalajara,' " Cancela recalls. "So I went to Guadalajara and I went to the No. 1 radio station and hired every deejay and I brought them over here."
The ratings improved, but problems remained. "What happened with these guys was I couldn't control them," Cancela says. "They were good guys, but they were young, making a lot of money in L.A. for the first time, and they were having the time of their life. One of them had a shift from 5 to 10 [a.m.]. He'd get here at 6 in the morning. By the summer, we basically ended up firing all of them."
Cancela turned to the source that produced Tanner, Power96 in Miami, and hired Phil Jones as program director. KLAX's share went from No. 19 to a tie for third in the latest ratings.
Now, Cancela is gunning for Heftel. He has hired away the man he calls "the godfather of L.A. deejays," Humberto Luna, who has a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame and was the first deejay in Spanish radio to make $1 million a year. Luna walked away from Heftel's KTNQ-AM in December with eight months left on his contract. KTNQ had changed its format from music to all talk and sports, and Luna was facing a 77 percent pay cut.
Heftel has responded by filing suit, seeking an injunction to prevent Luna from going to a competitor. So far, the courts have ruled in Luna's favor.
"If they didn't feel he was going to hurt, then I don't think they would be making such a fuss," Cancela says.
Pub Date: 3/02/99