I know you've said that the station was tinkered with based on research. But I tried listened to KXTN last month and the station sounds like it is all over the place.
It went on the AM out of consideration for the heritage listeners. No money is spent on research as the station stopped billing competitively over a decade ago.
Some of the songs sound "Norteño" based (lots of accordion), others sound like 80s synthesized songs, a few sound like modern Big Band songs, and from time to time some songs will sound like R&B inspired songs. It seems like KXTN has always focused on which artists to play instead of focusing on finding a genre/sound/identity. IMO, KXTN should have tried to find new 1st and 2nd generation Hispanic listeners instead of trying to grow from the same pool of aging "Tejanos".
The younger listeners to Spanish language radio are not "Tejanos". They are immigrants from Mexico.
Younger listeners have no interest in Tejano music, and are either into current regional Mexican or reggaetón.
Tejano is like Big Band. Radio dropped the bands in the 50's, but the bands kept playing for seniors at dances and concerts all over the country for decades. The music reappeard to an extent on Al Ham's Music of the Remaining Years of Your Life but those stations could not compete for big accounts and mostly survived on mom and pop businesses on dying AM stations. Sound familiar?
There were never any young folks who wanted to go see Tex Beneke or Lester Lanin, either.
(On a side note, I didn't hear the "Mi Trokita" sensation play on KXTN once during the two hours I listened. Seems like an obvious song to play on a Texas based format).
They probably are not updating the music often, and Trokita is not really Tejano music. On the other hand, if they were actually paying attention, it would have been played. But it's a dead format.
I appreciate your input on what went on behind the scenes David. We know that your experience and expertise makes all of our resumes look like used toilet paper. But for some reason, I can't help but feel that Univision didn't do its best. "Corporate research" on these types of regionalized formats are known to miss their mark. I'm sad to see a Texas format die, but it is what it is. I just think Tejano was worth trying to salvage due to the history it has on our state.
Univision did not do "corporate" research. We had a whole staff of research folks, and even a big dedicated call center of our own for callout research. Each big research project was done locally with total local input and teamwork in making the test playlist, the perceptual questions, the recruit and more. I know because directly supervising (and flying over 100,000 miles a year) the research division as well as outside contractors was part of my job.
But like always, yay corporate radio 😐.
This is not corporate radio. Lots of folks "inside the building" loved the format and the heritage. But it became unsalable and was losing money. The format would have been dropped years before, but there was concern about the damage to the "image" that would cause in San Antonio, long the home of the Tejano style.
But you will notice that the annual Tejano awards could not even get sponsorships in San Antonio and they moved to Corpus a number of years back.
On the other hand, KROM is "corporate radio" as it follows a standard format with out of market talent for the most part. It's currently #1 25-54 in San Antonio.
KXTN has been on KLTN-HD2 for over a decade and has never shown up in the ratings. KLOL-HD2 has spent about a year on the air and is already showing up.
That means it got one listener with one meter for at least 15 minutes. As mentioned before, those HD-2 channels with a 0.1 are mostly the "Thanks for playing" prize from Nielsen that subscriber groups get.
