| Changing their tune Young Latinos, with the aid of a Dallas-based company, are abandoning Tejano and switching the dial to hip-hop 04/12/2001 By Dianne Solís / The Dallas Morning News SAN ANTONIO – In this Tejano music capital, a strange thing has happened to those once-enduring, accordion-driven oompahs: hip-hop.
The generational soundtrack of young America is now the top radio format in a city where seven out of 10 people under the age of 18 are Latino.
The irony is that the dial-switching was brought about by Dallas-based Hispanic Broadcasting Corp., the nation's largest Spanish-language radio broadcaster, whose big product has been selling nostalgic musical formats for the nation's immigrant masses.
Listen to the banter inside the radio cabin: "It be your Freakin' Rican here," says 22-year-old Xavier "Freakin' 'Rican" García, a KBBT-FM disc jockey who is Puerto Rican and delivers his banter with a Bronx-accented drawl. "I got some Shaggy for you."
Shaggy is a Jamaica-born hip-hop artiste with a string of accordion-free hits that pack their punch with narratives that are, well, less than syrupy.
The new format illustrates a certain nimbleness in a Spanish-language radio industry that's been criticized as too rigid.
After years of serving up your Latina grandmother's music and your Latina mama's music, too, Hispanic Broadcasting realized it was giving away an important audience demographic to English-language stations, or worse, to Napster.
Young Latinos
That demographic is young Latinos. Half of the Latino population of Mexican origin is under 25 years of age.
"We need to program to English-dominant, young Latinos: They are just as valuable as older Latinos," says J.D. González, the 35-year-old operations manager for Hispanic Broadcasting's six stations in San Antonio.
More than a decade ago, Mr. González built his reputation as programming guru, pushing a Corpus Christi station to the top of the heap with a Tejano format in which DJs bantered in English 80 percent of the airtime. A young teen named Selena Quintanilla regularly visited his cabin, asking for advice on her demo tapes.
Now, his hip-hop formula with an even lighter sprinkling of Spanish is numero uno in San Antonio, according to Arbitron's monthly ratings for the last two months.
Ratings for the first full quarter come out next month.
McHenry Tichenor Jr., the 45-year-old president and CEO of Hispanic Broadcasting, says of the hip-hop/rhythm and blues format: "Young Latinos have always been a little more mainstream in their entertainment choices."
"Twenty years ago, young Latinos were listening to rock 'n' roll like Anglos and blacks," he said. "Now they are listening to hip-hop/R&B like everybody else."
The so-called money demographic is the 25-to-54 age market – consumers who are in their prime spending years. Hispanic Broadcasting has made a lot of money serving it. But the youth of the Latino market is prompting the company to reformulate its programming strategies.
Young Latinos are entering their prime earning and spending years in massive numbers.
"We liken the Hispanic population to where the baby boom population was at the end of World War II: It's young, it's having babies and it's building homes," Mr. Tichenor told Wall Street analysts recently.
47 stations
Hispanic Broadcasting now has 47 radio stations in 12 of the top 15 Latino markets.
San Antonio is the only market with a dedicated hip-hop/R&B station; other popular formats include Tejano in Texas, Mexican regional music and light Latin pop with such stars as Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera.
The company grew by targeting money-losers in the English-language market and switching their formats to Spanish-language or to formats that targeted the more assimilated Latino, such as those who like the Tejano genre.
The biggest hits of the most popular performers are mainstays on each format.
Hispanic Broadcasting's roots go back to 1949 in the Rio Grande Valley, where Mr. Tichenor's grandfather got his start. The company grew from the 1996 merger of Tichenor Media System Inc. and Heftel Broadcasting Corp.
It now serves markets as diverse as Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston, with their heavy Mexican populations, and New York and Miami, where there is a salsa and merengue-loving Latino public that recoils at the sound of an accordion.
The revenue of the media corporation rose from $164 million in 1998 to $237 million last year – a two-year period when the corporation made a number of acquisitions. Profits were up, too, at $41 million, from about $28 million in 1998.
But as of late, the stock price of Hispanic Broadcasting has been beaten like a piñata. On the New York Stock Exchange, it closed up $1.05 Wednesday at $19.30a share. But last year, it topped the $50 mark.
Analysts blame the tanking economy and the huge hits that all media corporations are taking as advertising sags. But that only makes the ratings wars more important, because ratings translate into advertising dollars.
Tops in L.A.
In the Los Angeles region, home to fully a quarter of the nation's Latinos, Hispanic Broadcasting owns KLVE-FM, the No. 1 station in all the market in any language.
KLVE features a Latin contemporary format, playing the hits of such groups as the Mexican rock 'n' roll band Maná and the Mexican singer and composer Juan Gabriel.
Over at KSCA-FM, another Hispanic Broadcasting station, Renán Almendárez Coello is the provocative DJ during morning drive-time, a key profit center for radio. Mr. Almendárez, a Honduran who is known on air as El Cucuy de la Mañana, or the Daytime Bogeyman, can now be heard in 12 markets, including Dallas.
His antics helped lift KSCA-FM to a No. 1 perch, though it has recently fallen back to No. 4. Those Arbitron ratings are essential because about 40 percent of Hispanic Broadcasting cash flow comes from the Los Angeles market, where it owns five stations.
Hispanic Broadcasting's hometown of Dallas, where it owns seven stations, has been one of its most difficult markets. Its most valuable property is KLNO-FM (94.1), with a format heavy on the accordion-infused Mexican norteño, Mexican-style cumbias, and Mexican mariachis. Hardly an hour goes by without tunes by the late Selena, who crosses genres.
In the most recent fall Arbitron ratings, KLNO-FM placed No. 10 in the market and had to share that place with an English-language station. A station with a hip-hop format holds the top spot in Dallas: KKDA-FM (104.5).
San Antonio presented some special challenges for Hispanic Broadcasting. Nearly two-thirds of the city is now Hispanic.
Format changes
When it suddenly got two new stations, bringing the total to six, the company needed to make some format changes.
The company's KXTN-FM (107.5) is devoted entirely to Tejano, whose apex passed with the 1995 death of Selena.
Another station, KROM-FM (92.5), offers up a contemporary play list of Mexican and Tejano rhythms but still hits an older audience. A popular feature on the station is a show in which listeners call in with sightings of the U.S. Border Patrol.
An even older generation listens to KCOR-FM (95.1) for Spanish-language oldies by such celebrated Mexican composers as José Alfredo Jiménez and Agustín Lara.
Two new stations meant two new formats. One, KCOR-AM, one of the country's first Spanish-language radio stations, is largely all talk now.
The other, now KBBT-FM, went hip-hop and has drawn big audiences with Xavier García and drive-time duo "Danny B" and "Rude Dogg," also known as Daniel Bocanegra and Rudy García.
Mr. González chose hip-hop because he recognized that young people under 25 weren't being served – and because it wouldn't cannibalize on his other audiences.
"My prediction for Spanish-language radio is that we are going to be saturated soon with Spanish-language radio stations," he says.
That's why he believes strongly in going after the youthful, often bilingual or English-dominant audience of Latinos, he says.
In Houston, a Hispanic Broadcasting station has already tried a less-focused mix to attract young Latinos. The format includes hip-hop, pop and dance rhythms.
Despite this courtship of young Latinos, or at least youthful Latinos, some music aficionados think that Hispanic Broadcasting is missing a big musical genre: rock 'n' espanol.
Jesús Chaírez, a DJ on public radio station KNON-FM (89.3) in Dallas, says rock 'n' espanol is a robust format that can boost ratings and attract advertisers. "People think we are only about Tejano and norteño music. There are so many other genres."
For several years, his Sunday KNON show has focused on rock 'n' espanol, a genre popular in Mexico, Chile and Argentina.
Music fan Roxy Ramírez of Dallas says she likes hip-hop but loves rock 'n' espanol. Her generation wants a sound that is "more cutting edge but still reflects the roots," the 31-year-old says. "Tejano was the music of my aunts and uncles," Ms. Ramírez adds.
You can't please everybody, but Mr. González will give it a try. He places a thin wafer in his CD player. It's the Kumbia Kings, who have hit No. 1 on the Billboard Latin 50.
The rhythm is Tejano, hip-hop and rock 'n' roll with bilingual lyrics. The group's founder is A.B. Quintanilla, Selena's brother.
|
