Tuning out Hispanics
The pending adiós by Boston's only full-time Spanish-language radio station has left Latino listeners asking, ¿Qué pasa, Boston?
On the streets of Jamaica Plain, Spanish is in the air, and Mega 890 AM is heard almost everywhere. Its tropical beats blare from the boom-boom speakers of rolling lowriders on Centre Street. Voices of the late Cuban singer Celia Cruz and rapper Daddy Yankee pump inside barbershops, beauty salons, and eateries such as Estrella Bakery, where the station's all-Spanish format has become a soundtrack for customers and local residents.
''It's part of my day," says Percido Lara, the bakery's owner. He says he enjoys the jokes and the interplay among Mega's DJs during the morning show, usually around the time he sets up the rows of flans, puddings, and cheesecakes for the day's sales.
''In the Dominican Republic," he says in his native Spanish, ''we had so many radio stations. Here, we don't have a lot."
Listeners like Lara are about to have even fewer options. Mega Communications announced last month that it was selling WAMG 890 AM in Charlestown and its repeater station in Lawrence, WLLH 1400 AM, for $9 million to WallerSutton 2000 LP. Based in New York, WallerSutton plans to convert the Latin/tropical format into ESPN sports programming, according to industry reports. WallerSutton did not return calls about the sale.
The switch will punch a hole in Boston's AM radio dial, taking away the only full-time Spanish-language radio station broadcasting out of Boston.
Without a daily Spanish-language newspaper in Boston, Hispanics, especially newly arrived immigrants, turn to radio for information about housing, jobs, immigration, and city life. Stations become cultural connections as DJs and commentators speak to them in their native Spanish and help them navigate in their adopted country. When Mega launched WAMG in 1998, the move sent a strong signal to the area's Hispanic community, giving it another outlet for a high-energy Spanish dance, reggaeton (a genre of dance music), and tropical tunes, and it provided a familiar voice in their native language.
So the station's pending adiós has left Latino listeners and community leaders asking, ¿Qué pasa, Boston? -- What's going on, Boston? Some have turned around the station's promotional catchphrase ''La Mega Se Pega," which means roughly ''Mega sticks," to say ''La Mega Se Despega," or ''Mega unsticks."
Mega's station manager declined to comment on the station's move, but the sale of WAMG seems contrary to what is happening around the country, where the rebranding of English stations to ethnic formats such as Spanish news and pop has been a boon to the radio industry's growth, according to
Two year-old WUNI-TV, New England's Spanish-language TV station, plans expansion. Page 10
''In the case of Boston, it goes the other way temporarily," says Tom Taylor, editor of Inside Radio, an industry magazine with offices in New Jersey and New Hampshire. He speculated that Mega may have decided to sell simply because WallerSutton came knocking. ''Sports has one of those powerfully emotional formats. . . . The buyer thinks they can do better financially with sports programming."
But in terms of the Spanish audience, ''the listeners will be abandoned," he says.
Boston's FM dial is crowded with various formats, from dance and all-news to sports and rock, creating a limited inventory of space and high premium on the dial, Taylor says. The Hub ranks as the ninth-largest radio market overall in the country, according to Arbitron radio ratings, but comes in 24th nationally in the Spanish radio market in terms of listeners and advertising -- LA, no surprise, is number one.
To find the Spanish-language options, listeners may have to hunt for the limited hours of such programming and struggle through static or faded reception.
In the North End, WUNR 1600 AM features specialty programs such as Ritmo Guanaco, an afternoon Salvadoran-themed show that focuses on local, national, and international news about jobs, immigration, tax help, and public housing, along with music. Commuters may pick up Super X 1410 AM, a bilingual station in Brockton, for merengue and salsa. There's Methuen-based WNNW Power 800 AM, another full-time Spanish-language station with a daily brew of tropical contemporary music, news, and a popular morning show called ''El Calenton de la Mañana." Power's signal penetrates into Boston, says general manager Pat Costa.
Over on the FM dial, the options are fewer. Jose Masso hosts the once-a-week music show ''¡Con Salsa!" at WBUR 90.9 FM on Commonwealth Ave. The show, now in its 30th year and the only one of its kind on the FM dial, according to Masso, plays Afro-Cuban, Latin-jazz, salsa, and merengue.
''Mega at least provided an outlet," says Masso, of Hyde Park. Over the years, he has watched stations come and go in Boston, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks struck big blows to national, regional, and local advertising revenues in general, including for radio programmers. Of Mega, he adds, ''They deserve our respect because they came in and tried to do something at a time when it was needed. It is still needed."
Still, Mega's competitors will not mourn its absence.
''It will bring more light on this station," says Stu Fink, general manager of WRCA 1330 a.m. in Central Square, ''and more light on our programmers, who are a little more community-minded." Spanish shows, such the morning ''Fabulosa" music program, dominate most of his station's weekday daytime roster. Fink described Mega as ''a music machine appealing to youngsters . . . while we have always had more diverse programs, catering to the Spanish thinking person. Goodbye Mega. Farewell."
US Census figures show that the Spanish-speaking population is a growing presence in this country, where Hispanics have become the largest minority. In Boston, the Hispanic population jumped from 61,955 in 1990 to 85,089 in 2000, an increase of 37.3 percent, while the total population rose only 2.6 percent during the same period, to 589,141.
Still, Boston's Hispanic advertising market hasn't fully ripened to the point of supporting more full-time Spanish stations on AM or FM, industry officials say. Statewide, Hispanics were numbered at 482,729, according to the 2000 Census.
''We don't have critical mass yet," says Pat Costa of Power 800 AM in Methuen. ''If we had 1 million Hispanics, at least in Massachusetts, [advertisers] would look at us differently. When you look at the Hispanic market, we are not even in the top 20 [markets for buying power]. It's an up-and-coming thing."
It was only two years ago this April that Univision, the largest Spanish television network, launched its first Spanish-language evening local newscast at Needham's WUNI-TV 27. It remains the only one of its kind in the region, and sales managers say they have to convince -- and educate -- advertisers about the area's Hispanic buying demographic.
''Within the Hispanic community, there is no problem convincing them that our viewers are listeners," says Alex von Lichtenberg, general manager of WUNI-TV 27. ''Within the general market advertising community, it's like missionary work. We are constantly educating on what we call the Hispanic opportunity, and it's really a marketing argument before it becomes an advertising argument."
Says Alberto Vasallo III, editor of the JP-based Spanish-language newspaper El Mundo, ''It's a limited pie because advertisers have yet to look at the Boston [Hispanic] market seriously. When they do, that pie will increase enormously."
For now, Boston's Hispanic radio rangers will have to fidget with their dials to see what else is out there on the Spanish-language airwaves.
''What is happening is that a lot of people are keenly interested in Spanish-language broadcasting," says Taylor. ''It just happens to be bad luck for Spanish listeners in Boston that a buyer seems to be interested in doing sports. Someone else will step up and offer programming in Spanish . . . It just may not be immediately."
Stay tuned.
Johnny Diaz can be reached at jodiaz@globe.com
