New Talk Show Targeting English Speaking Hispanics Launches Today

A new talk show launches today in two Texas markets. While there are many Spanish language talk shows offered in highly penetrated Hispanic markets like Miami and Los Angeles, the Mario Solich-Marich Show will be the first nationally syndicated show targeting the booming Hispanic market in an English language format.

The three-hour show debuts at 2 PM CT on KHRO/1650 in El Paso and KNVO-FM/101.1 in McAllen-Brownsville. Both stations are owned and operated by Entravision, one of the largest operators of Spanish language radio stations in the U.S. You can listen to the Mario Solich-Marich Show by selecting a link on the KNVO webpage.

KHRO already offers locally produced English language talk programming, while KNVO currently offers a music format directed to Hispanics. KNVO is expected to make additional programming changes in the near future.

For the past year, Solis-Marich has done a show on LA liberal talk station KTLK/1150, which is a Clear Channel Communications O & O station.

Hispanics are the fastest growing population group in the U.S. According to the Census Bureau, there are 46 million Hispanics in U.S. In fact, since the year 2,000 nearly half of 9.4 million Americans added to the U.S. population have been Hispanics.

According to a Talker’s Magazine survey only 7.9% of talk radio listeners are Hispanic. That same survey found that 19% of talk radio listeners were African-Americans. So despite the fact that Hispanic’s account for a larger percentage of the American population than African Americans (14.0% versus 12.5%) they are much less likely to listen to talk radio than non-Hispanics.

According to Paul Woodhull, president of Media Syndication Services and a partner in the new venture, Solis-Marich “has been honing his skills as talk show host in LA (where he is the number one weekend talk host) and now he is ready for prime time."

Woodhull should know a thing or two about talk show programming. He developed and owned The Ed Schultz Show, which he sold about two years ago to Product First --owned by radio veterans Randy Michaels and Stu Krane. He is also currently is part owner of The Bill Press Show.

Woodhull claims that while the show will attempt to bring Hispanics “to the talk radio table,” it will be presented in the familiar format of entertaining talk, interviews, and callers.

“Senor Pizza, the fastest growing pizza chain in the U.S, is owned by a company headed up by Hispanics, but they still use cheese, tomato, and dough to make their pizzas,” Woodhull said.

Solis-Marich confirmed that his new show will have an inclusive format.

“We don’t need to change the conversation, we just need to invite Hispanics into the conversation," Solis-Marich said. "Other talk shows have not invited them into the conversation. They haven’t focused on the issues that Latinos care about like the environment, education, and immigration.”

While it might be true that Hispanics are not big fans of talk radio; they seem to love all other kinds of radio, especially the Spanish language format.

According to Arbitron, Spanish language radio is far and away the fastest growing radio format. Over the past eight years (from 1998 to 2006), the combined AQH share of Spanish stations has grown from 6.7 to 11.2 -- a gain of 67.2%. The only other formats that have grown during this period are Sports -- 52.4%, Religious -- 38.1% and Urban -- 23.2%. Every music format has seen their share of the radio audience decline. News/talk, has essentially been flat over the past eight years, garnering a 14.3 share in 1998 and a 14.4 share in 2006. That’s a gain of less than 1% in eight years!

In addition to fact that the Hispanic population is growing much faster than the general population, there are other reasons why Spanish language radio has been experiencing double digit annual growth. Hispanics prefer radio to other media like newspapers and television. Also, they spend more time listening to radio than non-Hispanics – 22.5 versus 19 hours per week.

If Hispanic radio listeners accept Solis-Marich's invitation to table, that will probably be a good thing for liberal talk radio. In the last election, Hispanics favored Democratic candidates over Republicans by a 2-1 margin. Hispanics appear to be particularly annoyed with conservative talkers like John and Ken on KFI in Los Angeles.

The LA talkers spend about 50% of time bashing immigrants and making fun of Hispanic politicians like Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (who they call Villa “Reconquista”) and former Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante (who they call Busta “Menche”)