Michael Schneider has all the details about the new format (including both a sample playlist and an official quote from Sky Daniels), at http://franklinavenue.blogspot.com/2013/10/kcsns-hd2-channel-goes-latin-alternative.html. The new format is an outgrowth of the weekly "Latin Alternative" show--and is not to be confused with NPR Music's "Alt.Latino", which recently became the format of an HD subchannel and stream at Austin's KUT/KUTX.
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KCSN-HD2 is now "LatinAlt"
- Thread starter EJM
- Start date
I wonder what the HD coverage footprint of that smaller signal is? I have tried to get it in my car in the hills of Glendale, and it's a no-go (as is HD in general).
Best of luck to them with the format. I know of only one all-rock-in-Spanish station that ever was successful, and that was a decade ago in Argentina. It's a tough audience... and somewhat like alternative in English in its fragmentation and "I like that but not that and that" type of appeal.
There are certainly lots of present and past artists of considerable quality and they are being swallowed up by the current rhythmic trend sweeping Latin audiences here and in Latin America.
Best of luck to them with the format. I know of only one all-rock-in-Spanish station that ever was successful, and that was a decade ago in Argentina. It's a tough audience... and somewhat like alternative in English in its fragmentation and "I like that but not that and that" type of appeal.
There are certainly lots of present and past artists of considerable quality and they are being swallowed up by the current rhythmic trend sweeping Latin audiences here and in Latin America.
FWIW there's a 3-hour Rock en Espanol program on WORT-FM in Madison, Wis. on Wednesday nights. Of course, that's just three hours & it's on a non-commercial station. (OTOH, Madison is hardly the largest Hispanic market in the country..)
"I like that but not that and that" is pretty apt. I really enjoy about a third of it & probably any other listener enjoys a completely different third
"I like that but not that and that" is pretty apt. I really enjoy about a third of it & probably any other listener enjoys a completely different third
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Thomps2525
Guest
If you're not one of the seven people who actually own an HD radio, you can hear KCSN HD2 online (and see their playlist) by going to http://www.latinalt.org/
Unless you live in the heart of the valley or in limited areas of the westside, it is impossible to get even the main signal, much less the HD subchannels. It is unfortunate, because I really like the station, but I cannot enjoy what I cannot hear.
The irony is that KCSN themselves should be simulcast on an HD subchannel on a major frequency. The ideal frequency would be of course 100.3. I think I have mentioned this before, but such a marriage would be good for both stations. The Sound could get some much needed "street cred" by having the cool new adult alternaltive songs spinning on its subchannel while still continuing to spin the same old Boston, Skynerd and Zep tracks for themselves, and KCSN can reach a much wider audience just by getting even a small fraction of sampling from the Sound listeners. You may say, why would the Sound want encourage sampling elsewhere? As we know from David and others, the audience IS sampling, so wouldn't management rather have them check out KCSN on their own subchannel and position it as an extension of the station, as opposed to heading down the dial to direct competitor KLOS where they may actually stay away awhile?
But this is radio, and unless stations reside under the same roofs in places like Burbank and Culver City, the chances of any two stations doing any level of cross-promotion, regardless of how symbiotic it may be for them, are nil.
Quick side note: Speaking of cross-promotion, how far has KFI fallen that they need Petros and Money on KLAC to shill for them during the breaks in the Dodger games? Amazing.
The irony is that KCSN themselves should be simulcast on an HD subchannel on a major frequency. The ideal frequency would be of course 100.3. I think I have mentioned this before, but such a marriage would be good for both stations. The Sound could get some much needed "street cred" by having the cool new adult alternaltive songs spinning on its subchannel while still continuing to spin the same old Boston, Skynerd and Zep tracks for themselves, and KCSN can reach a much wider audience just by getting even a small fraction of sampling from the Sound listeners. You may say, why would the Sound want encourage sampling elsewhere? As we know from David and others, the audience IS sampling, so wouldn't management rather have them check out KCSN on their own subchannel and position it as an extension of the station, as opposed to heading down the dial to direct competitor KLOS where they may actually stay away awhile?
But this is radio, and unless stations reside under the same roofs in places like Burbank and Culver City, the chances of any two stations doing any level of cross-promotion, regardless of how symbiotic it may be for them, are nil.
Quick side note: Speaking of cross-promotion, how far has KFI fallen that they need Petros and Money on KLAC to shill for them during the breaks in the Dodger games? Amazing.
Channel Flipper, I know you want more from your "radio" .... This IS 2013 going on 2014 AND you do not have to continue to be a slave to the boring and the bland of radio in Southern California. About 98% of the time that I listen to any locally-received station is to catch a sportscast (baseball playoffs lately). Traffic?? I access the SigAlert app on my iPhone (why listen to KNX or KFI to hear them talk about traffic in the San Fernando Valley while I am driving on the 5 or 405 in Orange County?). News?? (someone famous dies I know about it quicker on Facebook). Fires in the area? If I am on the road I can see smoke in the air if a fire is anywhere near where I am. News? Yes, if a disaster occurs elsewhere in the country or in the world, my wife might call me on my cell phone and I'd be able to bring myself up to date. (When Michael Jackson died, I was in my office and my wife called me with the news). The point is, for me, local radio is now not relevant since NO station can entertain me because I am not being "served" with any dishes I like enough. This said from a person who earned his living selling radio air time "commercials" for almost a quarter of a century. Oh I haven't turned my back on broadcast radio totally, just LA-area radio.
It wasn't clear whether you are talking about in-office at-work listening to KCSN, but I would assume you have access to a computer at your office (you ARE the boss there, aren't you?) so there's online tuning in. So I guess you're talking about the mobile mode of listening.
If so Channel Flipper, there's two ways you can "listen" to KCSN:
1) If you have a smart phone and if you have a jack in your car that will allow you to play what you hear on your smart phone through you car radio speakers that's easy. Or you can buy a device that can transmit a signal to a vacant spot on your FM dial. This way you can listen "live". The downside of this method is that you might run up your cell phone bill. If I do this, I use the 'record' feature on my iPhone's TuneIn Radio Pro app and record programming overnight. I have the WiFi access from my home computer so the phone doesn't use excess bandwidth. Then I can play it back through my car radio.
2) But if content of music and a good playlist is more important to you than hearing anything "live", then do what I do. You probably have a CD player in your car and hopefully that's a 6-CD changer (like I have). You can set up on your home computer any software which allows you to record any radio-streamed content from the Internet. Record a block of 6-8 hours' worth of KCSN at home (you can set it up to record even if you are not at home). Set it up so that it will split the content into tracks. I like to make mine 26 minute tracks so 3 tracks of 26m is 78m which fits on a 80m capacity recordable CD. I use erasable/rerecordable CD-RWs. Once tracks are recorded it’s easy to burn them onto a CD for play in your car. Voila!! You can “listen” anytime to KCSN with crystal clear sound. If the recorded station plays commercials (or KCSN has extended announcements during a pledge drive) you can fast-forward past the commercials to get back to music.
Sure one can have an iPod with a million tracks on it but radio is different from a jukebox.
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Thomps2525
Guest
That's true---radio is different from a jukebox. A jukebox is stocked with 300 big hits and people play them over and over. Radio, on the other hand, gives you stations with a playlist of 300 big hits and they play them over and over. I'm glad I could explain this to you.
Are you obtuse???
We are talking about Adult Alternative stations.... With jocks (who do not come with a jukebox) who actually have some intelligent things to say about the music they play AND most of them respect the music. Seriously Steve you can't be this dumb. What decent AAA radio station OTA plays just 300 tracks. I am so over anything "mainstream" music radio. The fact that 300 song playlists attract more listeners is because most listeners are morons IMNSHO. But go ahead Steve and continue being a masochist listener who pines for radio that no longer exists in your favorite format.
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Super,
Definitely appreciate all the thought you have put into this to help me out. You and I are clearly in different phases of development on this. I am still polyanishly of the mind that I like my radio (particularly an LA-based non-com) to be both accessible, as in I can hear it when I tune to the proper frequency on the radio either at home or in the car, and have a decent variety so I don't hear the same songs in the one o'clock, five o'clock and eight o'clock hours that I originally heard in the morning at nine o'clock. Call me crazy.
Yes, I am the boss around here and in theory I get to choose the music, but often I am either at clients or on the phone so much it doesn't really matter. Or of course, in the car, which is why my radio has gotta be convenient (again, like it is supposed to be). But sometimes I get to five o'clock and I haven't even had a chance to put the music on. I am sure you understand. Here are some of my alternatives.
1) Sirius/XM in the car - Gotta have. Love the decade channels (although they are not as good as they were under pre-merger XM) and there are about 6-8 rock channels I flip around to, including AAA (the Spectrum), Little Steven's Underground Garage (lotsa great stuff there), Radio Maragritaville (It's not all Jimmy Buffet - lots of reggae, southern creole and Little Feet stuff as well) and The Bridge, which is like a time capsule of the great KNX-FM, beautifully stuck in the year 1980. Plus other things I like to sample, such as jazz, classical, country (several stations) and bluegrass.
2) A rather obvious choice, but the music channels on Direct TV when I am at home. It isn't Music Choice anymore, which I thought had better rotations, but it is still handy to pick a format and leave it on for background music. No commercials, no DJs and a similar channel music line up to SiriusXM, and best of all, it is easy. Just turn the TV on and tune the channel. My TV is big enough that you can hear it all through the house. Neighbors' houses too.
3) On the device, Pandora, Tune-in, Live 365 and a few other services. Not a high percentage of my time, but the last refuge when everything else gets me down.
4) Web stations. I flip a lot here, but of course KCSN from time to time and Radio Paradise once in a while among others. I love to go to KFOG's website and they always have the latest 10@10's which you can play back to back. Tasty trips down memory lane with no Brown Eyed Girls.
So I am not out in the lurch as much as you think, but again, I could be more adventuresome like you if I only had more time. Love the CD idea, but, oh the time that would take. Like the Chambers Brothers said, Time has Come Today, which is why local radio needs to be more convenient and more relevant. Because they insist on playing the same crap over and over, they have lost you, me and countless others. But they'll always have the consultants that have statistics that say we don't count and that lowest common denominator wins every time. Of course, they never say WHO wins every time. Of course, it is them.
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It looks like they just announced the official launch festivities--which will be held next week...
http://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/arts...l-a-s-first-24-hour-latin-alternative-station (linked from http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/a...launches-l-a-s-first-24-hour-latin-alternativ)
Also, Mr. Ross may be a fan...
https://twitter.com/RossOnRadio/status/398563298305523712
http://csunshinetoday.csun.edu/arts...l-a-s-first-24-hour-latin-alternative-station (linked from http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/a...launches-l-a-s-first-24-hour-latin-alternativ)
Also, Mr. Ross may be a fan...
https://twitter.com/RossOnRadio/status/398563298305523712
I'm still rather in awe of the press release, which says that among the music genres the channel will play is "SalSoul". Salsoul is a radio station in Puerto Rico; it was, briefly, also the name of a record label. It is not a kind of music.
I'm also barely able to contain myself over the statement, “Surprisingly, there is no other station in Los Angeles that serves the Latin Alternative marketplace". Of course, there is no Latin Alternative station anywhere except Los Angeles. There is certainly not a single one in Latin America.
Perhaps instead they can use the subfreuency to play something with a more widely accepted and used format, such as classical. Oh, wait...
For comparison purposes, here's how the folks at KUT/KUTX have described the aforementioned "Alt.Latino" subchannel/stream...
http://legacy.kut.org/2013/08/kutx-launches-latin-alternative-and-rock-music-on-its-digital-service
http://kutx.org/features/latin-alternative-music-and-rock-now-on-kut-hd3
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