![]() ![]() The song is part of Yankee’s album “Barrio Fino,” which was just awarded the best urban music album at this week’s sixth annual Latin Grammy Awards. ![]() Though usually performed in Spanish, reggaeton hits are increasingly incorporating all-English or at least part-English lyrics - a key reason for its growing crossover appeal.įor instance, one of the genre’s biggest stars, Daddy Yankee, didn’t start to get widespread airplay for his hit “Gasolina” until he remixed it with Atlanta rapper Lil Jon. They found the music they were looking for in reggaeton, which was breaking onto the edges of the mainstream culture after lumbering for about a decade with only club and underground exposure station executives believed the hipster musical genre was the smartest way to reach young Latinos. “Call it gut instinct or whatever, but we thought that a bilingual radio station in Los Angeles would not only be the first, but one that would also hit with force.” “We’ve watched Hispanic young people become a dominant market force,” said Haymore. But what caught their eye in terms of starting a bilingual station were data showing that a quarter of young Latinos report speaking equally in English and Spanish, and that some 80% are classified as “English capable.”įurther, even those who have only a quarter Latino blood still generally identify themselves as fully Latino. The pair understood the ratings potential given the city’s 4.4 million Latinos ages 12 and older - a figure that represents 40% of the overall population. ![]() Haymore, and its programming director, Pio Ferro, began poring over research about youth trends and demographics for inspiration - and they found it. Last winter, the station’s general manager, David L. The old station’s slow rating decline supplied the management with the motivation, and the nerve, to pull off its recent radical makeover. L.A.’s crowded Spanish-language radio market, which includes KXOL’s sister station KLAX-FM (97.9), meant ratings for the station’s previous Spanish contemporary format were being eroded. KXOL’s recent success might never have come if it were not for what the Spanish Broadcasting System Inc. of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, a trade organization based in McLean, Va. “Radio has discovered something Latino consumers ages 12 to 20 know already - it’s not a matter of Spanish or English, it’s Spanish and English,” said Alex Lopez Negrete, chairman of the Assn. In the years ahead, as successive generations of American-born children of Spanish-speaking immigrants come of age, other radio stations and other major communication mediums like the Internet and even television are likely to undergo some of the same cultural transformations, say media observers. The ratings, which drew 4.2% of the audience, compared with just 2% under the previous format, also suggested that the station pulled listeners from English-language youth stations such as KPWR-FM (105.9) and Spanish-language ones such as KLVE-FM (107.5). By targeting listeners like Soto, the station doubled its previous ratings, rocketing from 18th to second overall, and ranking first among 12- to 24-year-olds, according to the Arbitron rating service - a remarkable achievement in one of the nation’s most competitive radio markets. ![]()
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