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 Entertainment | November 2006 
Radio Beyond Borders
 Joanne Ho-Young Lee - Mercury News
| | KCNL-FM's program director bridges cultures, attracts listeners by airing Mexican pop music influenced by American artists. (Brad Kava - Mercury News) |
Manuel Moran of San Jose is the program director for KCNL-FM, which is raking in ratings with a playlist of modern Mexican rock 'n' roll. Manuel "Mango" Moran, program director of Spanish radio station KCNL-FM (104.9), has a funny way of knowing whether his Latin alternative rock and pop station is breaking through borders.
Almost every day, someone who isn't a native Spanish speaker calls to find out about a song they liked.
"Sometimes they try in Spanish, but you can tell they don't speak it much," says the 31-year-old Tijuana native, who went to high school in San Jose and is programming his first station.
"I talk to them in English. They say something like, `I heard this song, and the guy had a soft voice and it was played just before 9. I don't know any of the lyrics, but I really liked it.' "
Moran looks it up, tells them who the singer was and what album it's from and knows he's won another listener from north of the border.
It's a big change for the radio manager, who has been on the job for a few months and whose earlier positions included working as a touring pianist for an electronic banda group and managing the Sunnyvale nightclub Barcelona.
"People here don't know much about Mexican music," says Moran, who says his goal is to find new sounds and groups, before they become popular.
"But everyone in Mexico is brought up with American music. We hear the hits all the time, and that's why so much Mexican music today sounds like English music from years back. Kids who loved Depeche Mode or the Cure learned to play instruments and were influenced by them."
While most of the area's other Spanish stations play oldies and regional music, he offers up a sample of some of the adventurous new groups getting a buzz on his playlist.
Guitars thrash and punk pop whiny harmonies churn on the Mexico City band Allison's song "Fragil," which, other than the Spanish lyrics, sounds like any number of bands that followed Good Charlotte onto U.S. alternative radio.
Motel sounds very Cure-like, while Yuridia has the grandiosity of the '80s hair bands and a hit with Bon Jovi's "This Ain't a Love Song," translated into Spanish.
The station, which once focused more on oldies, still plays older hits by the likes of Jaguares and Mana, and current pop songs.
But newer music has boosted the station with listeners ages 18-34 from 19th place in San Jose during the spring to sixth in the summer, just behind KEZR-FM, KBRG-FM, KVVF-FM, KYLD-FM and No. 1 KSOL-FM. Eleven months ago, KCNL was an English alternative station.
Its recent move up in its target demographic is impressive because the station started hiring disc jockeys only a month ago and hasn't put a morning show team in place. Mornings are typically the highest-rated part of the day, and KCNL ratings now are based solely on music.
A morning team will start in January, but Moran will reveal nothing about it now.
One of the station's first disc jockeys is David Ruiz, who is doing the 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift. Ruiz, whose first job was using his loud voice in the Santa Clara Valley to sell vegetables at a flea market, has become a popular club, TV and radio personality.
The station's listeners are largely bilingual. Every hour, KCNL runs one commercial in English. Ruiz says he will also add songs by Madonna to the playlist, in English, because she has been popular with the Latino listeners.
But the feel is a celebration of life in America for ambitious young people.
"I tell the listeners how lucky they are to be here," says Ruiz, who posts a picture every day on his page on the station's Web site of primitive and rural things in Mexico, such as donkeys climbing a mountain, or open-air markets.
"I don't make fun of anyone. I talk about family and things that are important to them."
That's the kind of attitude Moran wants to build upon in making his a real community station for the upscale young immigrants who are his target audience.
Moran's vision in San Jose is shaped by his nights in clubs and at concerts more than by the surveys most program directors depend on.
Music was in his blood. His father, Manuel Moran, was a musician with a popular Mexican touring band, Ritmo Siete. And the program director moved between San Jose and Tijuana during his teens.
When he was 17 and at William C. Overfelt High School in San Jose, the younger Moran joined an electronic banda group, Banda MR7, which toured the United States until he was 25.
Wanting to get off the road, he contacted local promoters Ruben Alvarez and Jason Garner, for whom he worked on concerts, and he got hired, with no previous experience, to manage the Sunnyvale nightclub then called Monaco.
"They knew I knew good music, so they figured I could do the rest," he said.
The same spirit carried him into radio, where he worked as a production and image director at KSOL-FM "Estereo Sol" and KVVF-FM "Viva" for three years before getting hired to Clear Channel's KCNL, "Enamorada."
He's begun changing a lot at the station, but hasn't yet tampered with the "Enamorada" nickname, which means being in love.
"It sounds too soft for me," he says. "I'd want something that shows we are doing something innovative and different from the rest of the market." |
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