Hurban?

[PassDutch]

Now that New York & Los Angeles have got hurbans owned by Spanish companies, could Nine FM ditch adult hits for a rimshot hurban signal on 3 signals now that we've got Jack on 104.3?<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by PassDutch on 06/14/05 04:05 AM.</FONT></P>

 

[JeremyAndrews]

> Now that New York & Los Angeles have got hurbans owned by
> Spanish companies, could Nine FM ditch adult hits for a
> rimshot hurban signal on 3 signals now that we've got Jack
> on 104.3?
>

I think Viva has the best chance for going Hurban. Over Memorial Day weekend they were doing some sort of Hurban special. They even had liners in English.
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[JustinT]

> Now that New York & Los Angeles have got hurbans owned by
> Spanish companies, could Nine FM ditch adult hits for a
> rimshot hurban signal on 3 signals now that we've got Jack
> on 104.3?
>
Regardless of whether the format would work, would the coverage? Correct me if I'm wrong, but by looking at a map of Chicagoland's latino population (<a target="_blank" href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Latino_chicago1.gif>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Latino_chicago1.gif</a>), wouldn't the 92.7 signal be lacking in the west-side suburbs, which have a rather high density of Hispanic residents. I know that 99.9 did Spanish before, but it's signal covers rather few areas with a large Hispanic population.

It just doesn't seem that the 92.5 (no Hispanic listeners)/92.7 (somewhat decent coverage of Hispanic listeners) and 99.9 (minimal coverage of Hispanic listeners) would work for a simulcast. They've all done Spanish-language formats before, but none of them were very successful.

 

[dave73]

> Regardless of whether the format would work, would the
> coverage? Correct me if I'm wrong, but by looking at a map
> of Chicagoland's latino population
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Latino_chicago1.gif),
> wouldn't the 92.7 signal be lacking in the west-side
> suburbs, which have a rather high density of Hispanic
> residents. I know that 99.9 did Spanish before, but it's
> signal covers rather few areas with a large Hispanic
> population.
>
> It just doesn't seem that the 92.5 (no Hispanic
> listeners)/92.7 (somewhat decent coverage of Hispanic
> listeners) and 99.9 (minimal coverage of Hispanic listeners)
> would work for a simulcast. They've all done
> Spanish-language formats before, but none of them were very
> successful.
>
Entravision tried Super Estrella on 99.9 to the south and 103.9 in the NW suburbs and the NW suburban signal didn't really reach the hispanic population. 99.9 reaches few in the Chicago market. It reached mainly those in the Kankakee area, but Entravision didn't even try to market to the Kankakee area. SBS tried Onda on the old Energy trimulcast of 92.7 to the north & south and 92.5 to the west, and the WKIF signal only reached the latins in the Kankakee area and WKIE reached a limited number of latins on the north side of Chicago, and as far as WDEK, they only targeted the latins in and around Rockford. Onda, like Super Estrella wasn't even marketed to the Kankakee area, and I doubt Onda was even marketed to Rockford. I don't see any Spanish language format being tried on WRZA, WKIE, or WDEK, and we know Newsweb isn't going to try it on WKIF with its very limited coverage. At least Newsweb is taking ads from businesses in the Kankakee area, which the predecessors didn't do. I also don't see them bowing out of the variety format anytime soon either just because Jack is in town. Unlike BCR's formats that were copied by the city sticks and BCR's poor coverage, Nine has the coverage that the 92's didn't, even if they're on 3 different frequencies and that Chicago isn't covered as well because of 93.1 clashing with 92.7 (would be worse if 92.3 were transmitting from the city) and 99.5 & 100.3 clashing with 99.9.

 

[eggsdannythomas]

> > Now that New York & Los Angeles have got hurbans owned by
> > Spanish companies, could Nine FM ditch adult hits for a
> > rimshot hurban signal on 3 signals?


No chance, why would Newsweb start a station that only gang bangers are gonna listen to.

Viva would be fools to go with this flash in the pan Hurban format.

.........Get ready for D.E. to tear us a new one and set us straight.

 

[djdanska]

> It just doesn't seem that the 92.5 (no Hispanic
> listeners)/92.7 (somewhat decent coverage of Hispanic
> listeners) and 99.9 (minimal coverage of Hispanic listeners)
> would work for a simulcast. They've all done
> Spanish-language formats before, but none of them were very
> successful.
>
92.5 can get TONS of hispanic listeners. 92.5 covers all of aurora and west chicago very well. (and all cities near.)

 

[davideduardo]

>
> No chance, why would Newsweb start a station that only gang
> bangers are gonna listen to.

Hurban is far more than a "ganster" format. The average listener age is 26 to 27, and is not in a banger lifestyle.
>
> Viva would be fools to go with this flash in the pan Hurban
> format.

A format that is nearly 20 years old is hardly flash in the pan; did you say the same thing about hip-hop a few years ago?
>
> .........Get ready for D.E. to tear us a new one and set us
> straight.

Nope. Just presenting the real facts as opposed to suppositions.

 

[icybluelake]

David is right about the average age of hurban listeners, I've seen a similar statistic somewhere in the last couple of months.

Call it radio for gangbangers, and you might be making a big mistake. This is a format that is bringing music to more "crossover" listeners all the time and is having a big impact on hiphop and CHR stations in other markets with a Latino audience of any size. How successful the hurban format becomes isn't really the whole story here -- it's also how influential the music these stations are playing. Check out "non-Latin" formatted stations in markets like NY, LA and SF and you can hear it happening now.

If you're doubting this I'd say stay tuned. Ratings and advertiser response will have a huge impact obviously on whether its a flash in the pan, but the signs of it being more than that are there, at least in how other non-Latin stations are responding in big Latino markets. I'm thinking of Hot 97 and Power 105 in NY and Wild 94.9 in SF.

(editorial comment One thing that might set this format back a little bit is hurban stations sticking to a sound that is not all that musically diverse. Reggaeton is a good example -- it's a hot sound, but it's tiring to hear some of the same tracks rotated really heavily. I could be wrong about this but I'm thinking it's probably a good idea for hurban stations to keep a local and musically diverse sound to the format.

(What do you think David?)

 

[davideduardo]

>
> (editorial comment One thing that might set this format
> back a little bit is hurban stations sticking to a sound
> that is not all that musically diverse. Reggaeton is a good
> example -- it's a hot sound, but it's tiring to hear some of
> the same tracks rotated really heavily. I could be wrong
> about this but I'm thinking it's probably a good idea for
> hurban stations to keep a local and musically diverse sound
> to the format.
>
> (What do you think David?)

The first "Hurban" was of course not called that... it was simply a reggaetón station, WVOZ-FM in Puerto Rico. Despite not having a network, it is top 5 or 6 and has been for 5 years... with a 100% reggaetón format. Some stations will combine with hip hop, others with Spanish pop (talk about a dying genre...) but the core will be reggaetón.
>

 

[icybluelake]

Last time I was in San Juan it sounded like 94.7 had flipped to a reggaeton format also, with La X and at least one other station playing quite a bit of reggaeton as well.

WVOZ does play almost 100% reggaeton with an occasional hiphop track, and their ratings have been consistently top 5 or 6 from what I've seen.. I thought I read somewhere that they came out first in one book, but not sure that is true. Anyway, it's working well for them there. PR is PR, but the format looks promising for a lot of markets with big Latino populations in the states as well.