New : Spanish talker

[joshzz]

Would a Spanish language talk station be a hit? There are plenty of mexican/puerto rican music stations but not even one spanish talker to the best of my knowledge. Would the station sound like? Yes, foreign language of course but what would be the topics of discussion that would get our spanish are residents to listen?

 

[davideduardo]

Would a Spanish language talk station be a hit?

No.

 

[TGunn]

I think it might work. You would have to make it bi lingual really. Have Bi lingual hosts talking about how issues of the day are affecting the Hispanic community. Call screeners would be bi lingual. I think you might be on to something.

 

[Hdradioisthefuture]

NO...there are way too many Hispanic language stations clogging the dial from coast to coast and border to border. Instead let's eliminate some instead of adding more.

 

[TGunn]

NO...there are way too many Hispanic language stations clogging the dial from coast to coast and border to border. Instead let's eliminate some instead of adding more.

It would be an all talk Hispanic station.. the others are music. I think Bi lingual would be the best way to go to draw more listeners to the local/regional/national talk format.

 

[davideduardo]

I think it might work. You would have to make it bi lingual really. Have Bi lingual hosts talking about how issues of the day are affecting the Hispanic community. Call screeners would be bi lingual. I think you might be on to something.

Bilingual radio is radio that neither language group likes. It has been tried in the US over and over since the 70's and has not worked.

Talk radio in Spanish has only worked in certain specific markets, such as New York and Miami, over an extended period. It worked in LA during much of the 90's, but has been a failure in every effort to do on a national network basis. The problem is that there are different communities with different issues, accents and language usage.

 

[davideduardo]

It would be an all talk Hispanic station.. the others are music. I think Bi lingual would be the best way to go to draw more listeners to the local/regional/national talk format.

Here is the thing: talk is an older skewing format. The Hispanic community is young... about 10 years younger in average age than the non-Hispanic white community. So the audience for talk, meaning generally those over 45, is much more limited.

Hispanic media buys are nearly always 18-49 or a subset. So a format that appeals to the smallest age group and only the tail end of the group, will not get on many Hispanic as buys. And it won't rank high enough on 25-54 to get general market buys.

There is no market for a national talk format. It has been tried by Radio Unica, Univision America and others and did not work at all well due to the differences between places of origin including accent and language usage.

Doing talk locally is too expensive for the kind of small AM that might try the format.

Bilinguals that speak fluent Spanish tend to be Spanish dominants who learned enough English for their job or profession. They have never responded to bilingual presentations on music stations, so they would be less interested in mixed talk. Those who are English dominant are generally those born here, and they use Spanish to communicate with family, but have little interest in Spanish language talk radio as the subject matter tends to be irrelevant; if they want talk content they will use existing English language talkers.

In an era when English language talk stations are dropping severely, the idea of doing talk for a limited group of Hispanics seems even less of a probability.

All this has been tried and failed, over and over, during the last several decades. And today, with Hispanics using AM even less than the rest of the population, the chances for any success are nil.

 

[Hdradioisthefuture]

So in a nutshell, that would be another frequency that does not cater to mainstream America, nor do I understand, great...

 

[Bob Eubanks]

So in a nutshell, that would be another frequency that does not cater to mainstream America, nor do I understand, great...

Um, how exactly are Hispanic audiences not mainstream America? Your lack of understanding--ANYONE'S lack of understanding, to be clear--is not a benchmark for what is or isn't mainstream.

 

[chrocket87]

So in a nutshell, that would be another frequency that does not cater to mainstream America, nor do I understand, great...

I find it interesting that someone with the handle of "hdradioisthefuture" can define anything as being mainstream or not mainstream.

 

[davideduardo]

So in a nutshell, that would be another frequency that does not cater to mainstream America, nor do I understand, great...

No, it would be another frequency with a format that did not work where "work" is defined as "appealing to enough people for advertisers to want to buy ads on it".

There are loads of formats in ENGLISH that don't appeal to "MAINSTREAM AMERICA" because they are poorly done, or on bad signals or are so niche in appeal that there just are not many listeners.

Last week we had the case of a CBS-owned all news station that served the Baltimore-Washington,DC, corridor which switched format. It got such low shares that it was not viable. So we could say it was not mainstream enough to succeed.

And that begs the question of whether anything is "mainstream" in the USA any more. We have so many different political and social ideas, so many different preferences in clothing and appearance, so many different lifestyles and life choices and even so many levels of education and skills. Maybe that is exactly what makes the country great.

 

[davideduardo]

Um, how exactly are Hispanic audiences not mainstream America? Your lack of understanding--ANYONE'S lack of understanding, to be clear--is not a benchmark for what is or isn't mainstream.

Yeah, it's all about the 50,000,000 elephants in Hdradioisthefuture's room. At some point, they became as mainstream as Italo-americans or Irish Americans or African Americans.

I think he forgot to ask for a wake-up call.

 

[Hdradioisthefuture]

<yawn>, to all the one/sided politically correct posters, the members who share my opinion, refuse to waste their time responding and opening up flame wars with a bunch of arm chair know it all PD's, I guess I am the only fool bothering to respond and feed your attacks.

 

[davideduardo]

<yawn>, to all the one/sided politically correct posters, the members who share my opinion, refuse to waste their time responding and opening up flame wars with a bunch of arm chair know it all PD's, I guess I am the only fool bothering to respond and feed your attacks.

Your opinion is what? All you have said is that a Spanish language talk format would not be "mainstream".

My point is that, while Spanish language formats can be very successful in revenue and audience, thus being mainstream, a talk format would be neither. (And I have been there, done that and have a pretty good collection of the t-shirts).

How is "reality" an "attack"?

 

[Bob Eubanks]

<yawn>, to all the one/sided politically correct posters, the members who share my opinion, refuse to waste their time responding and opening up flame wars with a bunch of arm chair know it all PD's, I guess I am the only fool bothering to respond and feed your attacks.

Amusingly passive-aggressive version of not actually being able to refute facts.

 

[K.M. Richards]

<yawn>, to all the one/sided politically correct posters, the members who share my opinion, refuse to waste their time responding and opening up flame wars with a bunch of arm chair know it all PD's, I guess I am the only fool bothering to respond and feed your attacks.

Excuse me, sir, but the term "armchair quarterbacks" is defined as "a person who offers advice or an opinion on something in which they have no expertise or involvement".* David has programmed, owned, and consulted radio stations since almost before I was born (and I'm closing in on Medicare age).

Based on post content, the one who looks like he fits the definition is you.


* - http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/armchair-quarterback

 

[Bob Eubanks]

But if the usual pattern holds, such experience will then be dismissed as being "industry mouthpieces," or other similar description.

 

[K.M. Richards]

But if the usual pattern holds, such experience will then be dismissed as being "industry mouthpieces," or other similar description.

Very true, unfortunately. For my part, since I do not work for any of the big conglomerates, anyone attaching that tag to my posts is so far off base that I could throw them out from second easily.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

Favoritest Spanish Language station of mine (did I get the description right, David? : -) was Radio Rumbos from Venezuela. I got 'back' into short wave in the early Nineties, and R. Rumbos used to come in on 9630 kHz even when it was light outside.

I don't speak very much Spanish at all. Maybe eight words. But I really enjoyed their morning show.
Their morning drive was fabulous. Two tandem male news anchors would trade off, and hit a doorbell gong in between their stories. Then, of course, there was that hook -- that huge (for lack of a better word) trill of the 'R's when they'd say RRRRrrrrrrrodddddeeeeo RRRRRHHHOOOOOMMMMM-Bose!'

I found their 670 AM stream just before. Not bad music at all! Sounds somewhat voice trrrrrrrrrrrrracked. When they give the time, they sound a half an hour in front of us living in EST.

I will tune in as early as possible tomorrow or Monday to hear if they still do that ludicrous duelling-newsman morning show.
Heck, when I lived in Philly, that's what woke me up sometimes! Radio Rumbos 9630.

 

[davideduardo]

Favoritest Spanish Language station of mine (did I get the description right, David? : -) was Radio Rumbos from Venezuela. I got 'back' into short wave in the early Nineties, and R. Rumbos used to come in on 9630 kHz even when it was light outside.

I don't speak very much Spanish at all. Maybe eight words. But I really enjoyed their morning show.
Their morning drive was fabulous. Two tandem male news anchors would trade off, and hit a doorbell gong in between their stories. Then, of course, there was that hook -- that huge (for lack of a better word) trill of the 'R's when they'd say RRRRrrrrrrrodddddeeeeo RRRRRHHHOOOOOMMMMM-Bose!'

Classic two-man newscast configuration. This is Radio Ciro's in Guatemala City in 1963.



Note the smoking in studio and the cartoon on the easel. Usually each reader would have a copy of the same story, and they would either alternated individual sentences or paragraphs or stories. This meant that someone had to type each story with a carbon copy, rather than reading off the wire or from a newspaper.