If you use radio to help you but don't like Spanish music, possible.
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Miami/Fort Lauderdale WMIA becomes Magic
- Thread starter Huff
- Start date
If you use radio to help you but don't like Spanish music, possible.
They are spinning 10K in a row now, but will the spots eventually be in English, Spanish or a combination based on advertiser preference?
I would assume Spanish, although it's becoming more common for English spots to run on Spanish stations. They are seemingly running the station as a Spanish station
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Actually, the Tejano heritage predates the creation of Mexico as a nation, so it might be best to describe them as "Texans of New Spain heritage". While that is a bit didactic (
) it really shows how unlike the group is compared to the post-WW II migrants. They are often 4th, and 5th generation or more.
I learned Spanish starting when I was about 12 listening to stations like XEB from Mexico and La Voz del Río Cauca from Colombia, so that is a "yes" from me.
I’ve already picked up a little bit from the liners etc
I grew up speaking English and Italian at home. I learned Spanish from Spanish TV and radio in NYC.
In Ecuador, I had a group of friends who were all expats from some other country who were married to Quiteñas. We'd get together and each time we'd use one of our "native" languages, English, French, Italian or German. It's amazing how fast each of use learned the languages we did not know.
Here's what Inside Radio says...
"Core artists include Whitney Houston, Marc Anthony, Madonna, Lionel Richie, Shakira, Michael Jackson, and Celine Dion." And "The first quarter hour featured Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine’s “Conga,” Bryan Adams “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” Carlos Vives’ “La Gota Fria” and Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”
Except for the third song, the others are all core artists on WFEZ. To me, it looks like WMIA is iHeart's answer to WFEZ, but with Spanish speaking DJs.
And another observation... Before the debut of WFEZ, Audacy's AC station WLYF, had been one of Miami's top English-language stations. Even with WFEZ on the scene, isn't it amazing that WLYF has pretty much the same ratings it had before it got the competition? WLYF is still #2, 3 or 4 among English-language stations, with a playlist and format that's only a bit more contemporary than WFEZ. There's room in Miami for both stations! (And WLYF has not switched to Christmas music yet, even though we've gone past Thanksgiving, Black Friday and now Cyber Monday.)
"Core artists include Whitney Houston, Marc Anthony, Madonna, Lionel Richie, Shakira, Michael Jackson, and Celine Dion." And "The first quarter hour featured Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine’s “Conga,” Bryan Adams “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” Carlos Vives’ “La Gota Fria” and Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”
Except for the third song, the others are all core artists on WFEZ. To me, it looks like WMIA is iHeart's answer to WFEZ, but with Spanish speaking DJs.
And another observation... Before the debut of WFEZ, Audacy's AC station WLYF, had been one of Miami's top English-language stations. Even with WFEZ on the scene, isn't it amazing that WLYF has pretty much the same ratings it had before it got the competition? WLYF is still #2, 3 or 4 among English-language stations, with a playlist and format that's only a bit more contemporary than WFEZ. There's room in Miami for both stations! (And WLYF has not switched to Christmas music yet, even though we've gone past Thanksgiving, Black Friday and now Cyber Monday.)
I have always thought that the Miami market is less focused on Christmas music for more reasons than its tropical climate.
The main reason is that Hispanics don't have a huge Christmas music tradition, with very few pop seasonal songs. There are what are called "villancicos" which are faith-based songs that are Catholic tradition, but there are very few tunes about snow, Christmas trees, sleds, reindeer and other things that are not cultural.
And, of course, in South America the nations are either in the Tropics or the Southern Hemisphere and it's summer go-to-the beach weather in the coastal nations from Ecuador to Uruguay.
The market is about 54% Hispanic, 22% Black and only 21% non-Hispanic white.
So maybe the traditional Mariah Carey and friends songs don't hit the same emotional spot, and the seasonal ones about snow and icicles are irrelevant. I'd love to see a music test from that market!
Smooth Jazz died around when the PPM came out, and faded in the few remaining diary market. Pure Jazz is a public radio item; it leans very old and is a niche format.
Stations with mixes of English and Spanish are top billers in all of Latin America where there is commercial radio. Like any other format, it has to be done well.
That probably explains it. Christmas weather and activities in Latin America are not much different than the rest of the year. I wonder, do Hispanic families do Halloween activities? Is Dia de los Muertos (Nov. 2) and Halloween morphing into one holiday due to American cultural influence? Do Spanish-speaking folks from the Caribbean observe Dia de los Muertos, or is that more a Mexican thing?
In the U.S., our warm weather cities (except for Miami) love Christmas music. Ratings soar for KSSK Honolulu, KESZ Phoenix, KMXZ Tucson and KSNE Las Vegas. Cox and iHeart both do the Christmas format in Tampa, with big numbers for WDUV and WMTX each season. Most of the population in Honolulu is not white and has no experience with snow and evergreen trees. But KSSK and KPOI both flip to Christmas music in November. Mele Kalikimaka!
The question is, over time, with cultural pressure, will Miami embrace Christmas music as it has embraced things that are popular in other places around the U.S., like the NFL and pizza?
Miami embraces NFL and Pizza but not Christmas music. Why do you think this market hasn't gone with Christmas music on a radio station over the years?
WLYF is the closest to doing so, but nobody goes full-time over the holidays around here. Yet, if I go to Orlando, Gainesville, or anywhere else, WMGF and WKTK (respectively) will cover it!
WLYF is the closest to doing so, but nobody goes full-time over the holidays around here. Yet, if I go to Orlando, Gainesville, or anywhere else, WMGF and WKTK (respectively) will cover it!
In the US, immigrant kids adopt Halloween. It is not a Latin American custom or tradition.
Mexican-Americans who honor family traditions will see the two as radically different. Día de los Muertos involves the souls of departed family and friends. Halloween is about ghosts and goblins. It's "family" vs "fantasy".
Only place I have lived that has Día de los Muertos is México.
But all those other cities have mostly American born and American heritage residents. Miami is so signficantly Latin American and Haitian that the mood and feel change.
Not as long as the current heritage and mix of nationalities and cultures endures.
Pizza is universal. They have pizzerias in Buenos Aires and Quito and San Juan.
It only takes 40,000 or so to fill a stadium in Miami. The market has 5 million people in it now.
Radio has to deal with trying to get 500,000 to 800,000 in cume to be in the top tier.
And the stations that could do "all Christmas" which are WLYF and WFEZ have a huge percentage of Hispanic listeners, many of whom are not assimilated into American customs to the extent of wanting to hear Bing Crosby sing about Christmas. So those two stations have to measure how much audience they would loose by going in that direction.
Maybe they can have a Bing Crosby A.I. soundalike start singing "I'm dreaming of a hot burrito, Just like the one I used to gnaw.....".
Not funny. Moderately racist, but I'll write that up to ignorance.
And Miami Hispanics are mostly from Cuba, with the rest from, mostly, Caribbean Basin nations. Burritos are from Texas. They are not even from Mexico!
Much of my family is from Puerto Rico. I lived and worked in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and worked in Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras and Guatemala, all on the Caribbean, and I'm offended.
Again, not funny.
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