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Playa Expands In Detroit
- Thread starter 101.9 La Kalle
- Start date
Salsa tends to be a predominantly male and over 45 format.
Well, Detroit's Playa is a bit different. The station isn't completely Tropical like Tampa's Playa and not Tropical A/C like Fort Myers' Playa as unlike the other two, they throw in Reggaeton and Pop.
This station is a classic case of "if a tree falls in a forest..."
The 99.1 signal is abysmal and doesn't reach any zip codes with sizable Hispanic populations well. (99.1 is scratchy in Pontiac and suffers from occasional co-channel interference from Lansing's WFMK and perhaps Windsor's CJAM.)
The 93.5 signal is severely directional. It does reach most of Wayne County well, which is now nearly 7% Hispanic. Most Wayne County Hispanics are of Mexican descent, though, which calls into question the wisdom of choosing this Tropical-heavy format.
The 99.1 signal is abysmal and doesn't reach any zip codes with sizable Hispanic populations well. (99.1 is scratchy in Pontiac and suffers from occasional co-channel interference from Lansing's WFMK and perhaps Windsor's CJAM.)
The 93.5 signal is severely directional. It does reach most of Wayne County well, which is now nearly 7% Hispanic. Most Wayne County Hispanics are of Mexican descent, though, which calls into question the wisdom of choosing this Tropical-heavy format.
@MarkW My best guess is that Detroit has lacking such a station for years prior to the launch of La Playa, and even some Mexicans and other NON-Puerto Rican Hispanics DO listen to Salsa, Merengue, Bachata and/or Reggaeton, just as some Puerto Ricans, Cubans and Dominicans in general DO listen to Tejano, Regional Mexican, Cumbia and/or Duranguense as well, and vice versa, even though Cumbia is more native to Colombia... And speaking of Regional Mexican, there already exists WDTW 1310 AM and W300DI 107.9 FM in Dearborn (even though they have supposedly introduced reggaeton in recent years as well) and WSDS 1480 AM in Salem Township with simulcasts on WCAR 1090 AM in Livonia, which carries a combination of Spanish Contemporary music including both Regional Mexican and Tropical music... WMGC 105.1 FM HD2 and its translators W228CJ 93.5 FM in Detroit and W256EA 99.1 FM in Birmingham are the only exclusively Tropical stations in Metro Detroit...
Salsa is very a fringe, very old-leaning format even in the Caribbean rim. More importantly, it's one that Regional Mexican listeners actively dislike.
@Identnut With all due respect… You will be surprised to learn that there always be at least one person that listens on, especially the oldies…
One person does not make a successful radio station. All of the stations you mentioned above are fringe signals in the market. Detroit as a market does not yet have the demographics that supports a full-market FM in any Spanish format.
I'm Puerto Rican. I have family in the area. And I can tell you that they don't listen to radio, let alone this station.
There definitely is an audience for what Playa is serving, but it isn't in Detroit. This kind of almost completely Tropical format is more popular in the Caribbean. Not in the United States itself. For example, go to Dominican Republic and you'll see that almost all of the top non-AC stations are Bachata-focused Tropical. Additionally, in Puerto Rico, some of the top stations are a combination of Salsa and Talk. For Tropical to be successful in the United States, you'll have to throw in Reggaetón and Pop as well as other modern rhythms.
And that is in markets where 100% of people are Spanish-speaking. In a place where Spanish-dominants aren't the majority, forget it.
@Identnut I'm Puerto Rican too... My family listens to the station...
Not all the Caribbean rim: salsa is... and mostly was... a format for Puerto Rico and mainland Puerto Ricans with a subset of Cubans. In 1986 I eliminated all salsa on Z-101 in Santo Domingo and went "all merengue" until eventually going all talk. While there have been salsa subsets in Colombia and Venezuela, this was never a music style that would make a station anywhere else #1.
But you are very right that the format leans old as, by the mid-90's, the youngest demos had moved on to reggaetón.
For Detroit, I can't see playing any salsa at all to be effective.
I'll repeat again my anecdotal experience in LA: when we did big events in parks at both (K)KHJ and KLVE, we had gang-control regulations that required getting everyone out of the venue by sunset. So we'd book a salsa band to close. Within 10 minutes, everyone was gone.
@davideduardo They DON'T just play Salsa though... There's some merengue, bachata and reggaeton thrown in as well...
That is what, vulgarly, in Puerto Rico we called "un arroz con culo".
To be charitable, that is precisely what a station would play and would work well... in Orlando, Florida. The 79th municipality of Puerto Rico. Not Detroit. And not even identical, because it's going to be mostly reggaetón nowadays with the tropical gold for flavor.
You have to be very careful with the merengue. It's a kind of music that is great for Puerto Rican dance clubs and the like... because it is easy to dance... but not so much on the radio.
(You forgot that there are at least three municipalities of Puerto Rico in Metro New York... maybe four)
These days in Puerto Rican radio you don't hear much merengue other than Elvis Crespo and Olga Tañón... who of course are Puerto Rican, not Dominican, and in the case of Olga, she's an AC crossover. And Dominican Juan Luis Guerra who is not only also an AC crossover, but is a superstar, period.
In that case we should count Kissimmee, FL as a separate municipality!
Oddly enough, there's no Church's Chicken there, which is like having no Jollibee in Daly City, CA.