How Does Miami Support Six Spanish Talk Stations?

[Gregg]

I'm curious in how the Cuban expatriot community in Miami supports so many talk radio stations. 670 WWFE, 710 WAQI, 1020 KURN, 1140 WQBA, 1210 WNMA and 1260 WSUA are all listed as Spanish Talk stations. In most other markets with large Hispanic communities, Spanish Talk stations don't do very well. NYC and LA only have one Spanish Talk station and both struggle to get a one-share. Co-owned 710 WAQI and 1140 WQBA (the QBA, pronounced Cuba in Spanish) are 50,000 watt stations regularly jammed in Cuba, along with 100,000 watt 1180 Radio Marti broadcasting from Marathon in the Keys, with studios in Miami.

Six commercial U.S. stations and one public station all doing Spanish Talk. Do they all discuss how bad Castro is and how they will someday reclaim Cuba and turn it into a U.S.-style democracy? Obviously many of the original people who fled Cuba and re-settled in South Florida are passing on. Are their children still interested in this conversation?

Interestingly, Miami has only one English talk station, 610 WIOD, and it's only rated around #20. 940 WINZ had been doing Progressive Talk but flipped last year to become Miami's third Sports station. So Spanish-speaking audiences want Talk but English-speaking audiences don't, even with a large English-speaking retirement community?

Gregg
[email protected]

 

[JayR]

Only in the Banana Republic baby...only in Miami.

;D

 

[davideduardo]

I'm curious in how the Cuban expatriot community in Miami supports so many talk radio stations. 670 WWFE, 710 WAQI, 1020 KURN, 1140 WQBA, 1210 WNMA and 1260 WSUA are all listed as Spanish Talk stations. In most other markets with large Hispanic communities, Spanish Talk stations don't do very well. NYC and LA only have one Spanish Talk station and both struggle to get a one-share. Co-owned 710 WAQI and 1140 WQBA (the QBA, pronounced Cuba in Spanish) are 50,000 watt stations regularly jammed in Cuba, along with 100,000 watt 1180 Radio Marti broadcasting from Marathon in the Keys, with studios in Miami.

Six commercial U.S. stations and one public station all doing Spanish Talk. Do they all discuss how bad Castro is and how they will someday reclaim Cuba and turn it into a U.S.-style democracy? Obviously many of the original people who fled Cuba and re-settled in South Florida are passing on. Are their children still interested in this conversation?

All the stations tend to have older audiences, and sell advertising mostly in their own community. But Miami is unique in having a business community that is, in its majority, Latin-owned and Latin-managed... the only place in the US where this is the rule, not the exception. So, for starters, there is money.

Then you have a predominantly exile-based community. Cubans are exiles. Most Colombians are exiles from the crime and violence. Nicaraguans are exiles. These are people of the higher education and income levels who left their country because of fear of death or imprisonment. They are interested in news, in talk, and are nostalgic about the way things used to be.

Contrast this with the classic immigrant of the Southwest who is generally not educated (In 2000, 74% of Latin American born women and 49% of men had a 6th grade education or less in the LA market) and is not interested in the political system in the home country. The one time that talk worked in LA, all talk was about sports and local events, not about Mexico...

Oh, in Miami, there is one exception... WSUA is Colombian, an affiliate of CARACOL and targeted at the Colombian and Bolivarian populations.

WQBA leans younger, having dropped the "Cubanísima" name a decade or more ago and mostly dealing with Miami. The rest talk about Fidel... there is even a joke about WAQI doing a show about elephants. On inspection, the show was about how elephants did not live in Cuba because elephants can't forget and so they still remember how Fidel betrayed Cuba in 1959.

When you take into account that Miami is the only metro in the US (excluding, Puerto Rico, of course) where Hispanics have higher household incomes and PCI's than non-Hispanic whites and you can see that there is a revenue base for all this programming... although several of those stations are brokered and have very, very low ratings.

 

[davideduardo]

Only in the Banana Republic baby...only in Miami.

As we used to say in Ecuador, "Only the hogs and the gringos eat bananas..."

Miami's Hispanics have higher family and personal (PCI) incomes than non-Hispanic whites. In 1959 before the Cubans started arriving, Miami was essentially in bankruptcy. there were tens of thousands of abandoned homes and as many empty hotel rooms, all due to the sudden cheap availability of jet air transportation making the railroad and Florida destinations out of favor for vacations. The City of Miami lost so much tax revenue they could not provide basic services. Then the Cubans came, and took near-dead Miami to its position of the hub for travel and commerce with Latin America.

No bananas, baby. Just money and hard work. Horatio Alger would be proud.

 

[Ai4i]

I could be wrong, but I think 1450, transmitting from a largely Creole area, is talk and 830 and 1360 are Christian talk. Miami also has seven commercial FM music stations, one non-com Christian, another non-com with extensive hours devoted to Latin Jazz, plus at least three full power TV stations and a couple low power TV stations.
Por favor, tostada y cortadito y guava pastelitos, gracias.

 

[smedge2006]

To all of the explanations above, I would add, to explain the lack of English-language talk, that as Miami's Hispanic communities (plural) are different, so are Miami Anglos.

During the 90's, there were two top-20 markets where Rush Limbaugh did not lead the talk audience in middays. One was San Francisco, the other Miami - Fort Lauderdale. Miami's Anglos tilt more liberal than just about any market in the country outside the Northeast, the Northwest, SF, or college towns. Even South Floridians who are not liberal seem more likely to listen to liberal talk radio, given the history of Neil Rogers and others who knew how to do it and bring in an audience at the same time. (940's failure was not one of audience size, relative to 610).

But cookie-cutter syndicated talk is set up to treat all markets the same. WIOD and WFTL mostly pump in the same right-wing syndication that the rest of the country gets. The local hosts may not be as overtly political, but they don't dare take stands that will rankle the Rush & Co fan base. That base is smaller than most other markets of comparable size but it's the only base cookie-cutter talk can attract so they obviously don't want to drive it away. I don't know whether Joyce Kaufman's "conversion" to conservatism was genuine, but it sure seems to have been a prerequisite to staying in the biz.

Miami is different. Spanish-language talkers can reflect that difference because their business model is not about syndication. English-language talkers are built around syndication so they cannot. Thus the pathetically small audiences for English-language talk in SoFla.

 

[JayR]

Only in the Banana Republic baby...only in Miami.

As we used to say in Ecuador, "Only the hogs and the gringos eat bananas..."

Miami's Hispanics have higher family and personal (PCI) incomes than non-Hispanic whites. In 1959 before the Cubans started arriving, Miami was essentially in bankruptcy. there were tens of thousands of abandoned homes and as many empty hotel rooms, all due to the sudden cheap availability of jet air transportation making the railroad and Florida destinations out of favor for vacations. The City of Miami lost so much tax revenue they could not provide basic services. Then the Cubans came, and took near-dead Miami to its position of the hub for travel and commerce with Latin America.

No bananas, baby. Just money and hard work.Horatio Alger would be proud.

There's a reason why my post was italicized: it's a drop that Neil Rogers would air on his radio show.

8)

 

[LLL]

It's amazing that Regional Mexican can't establish itself in the market.

I understand that Mexicans are not the dominant Hispanic demo in Miami, but you would think the format could carve a niche for itself.

 

[davideduardo]

It's amazing that Regional Mexican can't establish itself in the market.

I understand that Mexicans are not the dominant Hispanic demo in Miami, but you would think the format could carve a niche for itself.

The figure for Mexican origin persons in the Miami MSA is in the 50,000 person range, and that is up from around 20,000 in 2000. I use first generation because it is unlikely any young person growing up in Miami would use a regional Mexican format station for entertainment.

Regional Mexican is not the favorite music... or even liked... by all persons from Mexico. So figure that at most around half the persons from Mexico would like the format. And the non-Mexican population is not likely to give any time at all to such a format.... as the countries where regional Mexican does have some appeal, Guatemala and El Salvador, represent very small factors in Miami.

The format has been tried on FM (La Raza) and on 1430 AM in Homestead, and did not achieve viability.

 

[LLL]

And not all people who like Regional Mexican are Mexican. That music is like the Televisa Telenovelas, meaning it has strong appeal to non-Mexicans.

Regional Mexican does big business when it stops in the Miami market. Vicente. Marco Antonio Solis. Los Tigres Del Norte. I attended Solis at MSG in NYC a few years ago and the audience was not very Mexican at all.

That's why I am surprised that Miami can't support Regional Mexican, even if it only average a 0.7 like Q-Buena in NYC/LI.

 

[davideduardo]

And not all people who like Regional Mexican are Mexican. That music is like the Televisa Telenovelas, meaning it has strong appeal to non-Mexicans.

A few regional songs cross over. But the format itself is not amenable to non-Mexicans. The crossovers are often songs like Pepe Aguilar and Alejandro Fernandez... artists who are not considered regional "enough" to be played on regional stations in Mexico or the US.

You will not find a regional Mexican format in anyplace south of San Salvador, and even there it is a grupera format, with the hard core regional like banda and durangüense removed.

Regional Mexican does big business when it stops in the Miami market. Vicente. Marco Antonio Solis. Los Tigres Del Norte. I attended Solis at MSG in NYC a few years ago and the audience was not very Mexican at all.

In Mexico, many if not most regional stations don't play Vicente... his music is traditional and does not fit with the tubas and accordeons and the 18-34 focus of the format.

Marco Antonio Solís has been a pop ballad artist for two decades, going back to Chiquilla Bonita. With the exception of a couple of almost novelty true regional songs, Solis has not been regional for 20 years.

In LA, a rock show like Café Tacuba will fill a venue. But there is absolutely no way a rock en español format would work anywhere within about 5000 miles of LA. A regional act may fill a house, but there we are talking about 2 thousand... 3 thousand... maybe 5 thousand for the true regional acts. It takes 500,000 to 800,000 cume persons to make a Spanish language station in Miami successful.

New York is different. Not 40 thousand or 50 thousand Mexican heritage persons but, rather, close to a million. And still, with that group a regional station in NY gets, in the last 4 books, between a 0.2 and 0.3 in 12+.

That's why I am surprised that Miami can't support Regional Mexican, even if it only average a 0.7 like Q-Buena in NYC/LI.

Try a 0.3. If that station gets such low shares, in Miami it would get a 0.0 or less.

 

[LLL]

NY Metro, including NYC, LI, Westchester and NENJ has about 350,000 Mexicans. I have never heard 1,000,000 Mexicans.

Either way, you're right about the poor market share of Que-Buena. It's the only Regional Mexican in the market, and they do a ton of cross-promotion with Univision Television.

But the signal is very weak. The stick is on Long Island and does not have total market coverage.

 

[davideduardo]

NY Metro, including NYC, LI, Westchester and NENJ has about 350,000 Mexicans. I have never heard 1,000,000 Mexicans.

Either way, you're right about the poor market share of Que-Buena. It's the only Regional Mexican in the market, and they do a ton of cross-promotion with Univision Television.

But the signal is very weak. The stick is on Long Island and does not have total market coverage.

The American Community Survey showed over 550,000 Mexican and Mexican heritage persons in 2010 in the New York MSA (not the radio MSA, by the way) and this can be projected to over 600,000 for 2012. However, estimates from respected demographers have indicated that there is a significant Census undercount due to immigration status and the real number may be around 900,000 to 1 million.

The Census and its related annual ACS data forms the basis for the Claritas data Arbitron uses.

Even at 600 thousand to 700,000, that's 12 to 15 times more Mexican population in the New York metro than there is in Miami.

While the WQBU signal is, indeed, a Class A, it is licensed to Garden City and the transmitter quite near the areas with the greatest Mexican origin population. It does not cover all the Mexican population, but considering that "new arrival" groups tend to concentrate in specific areas, WQBU does as well as might be expected considering that, like all other formats, regional Mexican is not the choice of all persons from Mexico.

Considering that a well-researched majority of New York Mexican immigrants in the metro are from Puebla, we again have a reason to understand that the regional format is going to be less attractive and various pop / CHR options will be more favored, including those in English.

 

[DDV49]

WNMA is ESPN Spanish sports,WOCN is brokered with an LMA with Multiculural Radio (WNMA), WURN 1020 re-broadcast there programming on WLVJ 1040..And how about the Haitian, Carribean Stations..980,1320,1170,1580 and 1700.All brokered and most likely making good money....

 

[cd637299]

WNMA is ESPN Spanish sports,WOCN is brokered with an LMA with Multiculural Radio (WNMA), WURN 1020 re-broadcast there programming on WLVJ 1040..And how about the Haitian, Carribean Stations..980,1320,1170,1580 and 1700.All brokered and most likely making good money....

....and let's not forget the Haitian pirate FMs here..... on second thought......

cd

 

[tanner]

Duh!

 

[gordonlee]

English-language talkers are built around syndication so they cannot. Thus the pathetically small audiences for English-language talk in SoFla.

And you forgot to mention that WIOD-AM is practically unlistenable after 6pm when everyone goes home and the automation attempts to run everything (and you get spots playing over other spots, weather forecasts from 2 days ago firing off and "live" traffic repeated twice in a single stopset).