Global Courant 2023-04-15 15:45:00
Growing up in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Stephanie Valencia tuned in with her family on weekends to a public radio station playing Mexican music and conjuring up song dedications for family members.
That kind of local, cultural appeal is what Valencia, 40, and her business partner, Jess Morales Rocketto, 36, say they want to cultivate and maximize among the 18 mostly Spanish-language radio stations they bought from TelevisaUnivision last year.
Quietly and with little notice, the two Latinas and their newly formed Latino Media Network (LMN) began operations on March 30 on three radio stations in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, a region of coveted Latino voices that has received renewed attention in recent elections. drawn. cycles.
Last summer there was much more fanfare and backlash, when the Latinas bought $60 million from the 18 stations, including these three base stations, became public.
That news caused an outcry from Republicans, who claimed the purchase would silence conservative voices, even as conservative media owners are expanding into Hispanic media as well.
Valencia and Morales Rocketto, who worked for former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton respectively, have downplayed their partisan backgrounds and deflected criticism from conservatives that they had received financing from an investment company associated with the creation of liberal philanthropist George Soros. They have repeatedly said that they do not intend to use the stations to spread the message of the Democratic Party.
In a recent interview with NBC News, the two women said their vision is to leverage Latino cultural touchstones in music, sports and entertainment to build trusted news and consumer information sources.
Few Latino owners – but many listeners
Lost in last summer’s commotion was the fact that the two Latinas, who are not hugely wealthy, have made their way into the ranks of the majority of the media. Few other Latinos can be found there – Latinos were majority shareholders in only 9% of FM and 3% of non-commercial AM radio stations and in 5% of FM and 3% of AM commercial stations in 2021, according to the latest Federal Communication Commission broadcast property report. That is even though Hispanics are avid radio listeners.
“We own the properties that serve our community, which is a big reason we made this leap,” says Stephanie Valencia, left, with Latino Media Network co-owner Jess Morales Rocketto.Courtesy of Latino Media Network
Maria Contreras-Sweet, one of several minority Latino partners or advisors in the purchase, said while Latinas have made political progress, they need to accelerate their economic equality.
“This is that kind of effort, where two young women have understood how to access capital to buy a company — it’s a triple bank shot,” Contreras-Sweet, who led the Small Business Administration under Obama and a commercial bank aimed at Latinos, said, borrowing a billiards term to describe the LMN purchase.
Radio reaches 97% of the Latino population monthly, more than live or recorded television, smartphone content, TV-connected devices, computers or tablets, according to a 2022 Nielsen report.
Radio is an important source of information for this growing segment of Americans. Its popularity has also drawn attention to station content and heightened criticism of conservative voices promoting the spread of misinformation.
The purchased Valencia and Morales Rocketto stations are in eight of the top 10 markets, which Latinas said reach 33% of US Latinos.
“Radio is such a constant in this community that if you want to make a bet, radio and Latinos are a good choice,” said Stacie de Armas, senior vice president of diverse insights and intelligence at Nielsen.
“We own the properties that serve our community, which is a big reason we made this leap,” Valencia said, “and we took the chance when we knew that Univision was selling these stations and that they might be in non-Latino could end up in. hands.”
Cultural focus — and political counterbalance?
LMN’s acquisition of Miami’s Radio Mambí, a fixture in the Cuban-American community, attracted the most outrage when the purchase is announced. The conservative station is hugely popular in Miami, but it and others have criticized comments made by some hosts, including the spread of false information, such as that the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol was started by antifa or claims that Joe Bidens The 2020 presidential victory was due to fraudulent elections.
Americano Media, which bills itself as Spanish-language Fox News, last year switched from broadcasting its programs on satellite radio to providing content on a Miami station that replaced its sports programming with the conservative talk format. The partnership with Audacy, a free broadcast and internet platform that owns the station, includes a number Alumni of Radio Mambi which left when LMN bought it.
Since purchasing the channels, Valencia and Morales Rocketto have backed down when asked if their programming will counterbalance right-wing commentary and targeted disinformation.
According to Morales Rocketto, because of their previous work in administrations, she and Valencia understand the limits of political discourse and news coverage. “We really believe in the power of not just the legislative process or just the government to make changes; we really see how the media and culture and entertainment affect how you think and feel,” she said.
The two women said they would like to provide more programs and content on financial literacy, especially with so many Latinos starting small businesses, and on health and parenting.
Nevertheless, in the current political climate, their ownership of stations in eight of the top 10 Hispanic media markets cannot be overlooked, said Stella Rouse, a professor of politics and government at the University of Maryland.
Even if they’re not out to turn the channels into a left-leaning Fox News, LMN will provide the necessary counterbalance, she said. “If there’s an opportunity, even if it’s indirect, that’s a step forward because that is – radio stations that may not be taken over by others who have this right-wing disinformation agenda.”
Al Cárdenas, an attorney who served as chairman of the Florida Republican Party and served as an adviser to former presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, said he wants Hispanic radio to return to more content creation, which is why he helped buy the stations . Cárdenas, who split from former President Donald Trump’s Republican backers, said he sees the LMN purchase as an effort to create stations and content that “emphasize knowledge rather than fiction.”
“In the beginning there may be other investments that will have a higher return — but this goes to the heart and soul of who I am as a Hispanic,” said Cárdenas, who added that he listens to Spanish-language Spanish radio while driving. .
A Latino financial ‘barn raise’
Valencia and Morales Rocketto said they got the idea to enter the radio market through their work at Equis Research, a Democratic, Latino-focused research and research firm. Part of their most recent research focused on who can best convince insecure Latinos that misinformation or misinformation is false.
Their job meant they spent a lot of time talking to Latinos and getting to know their key sources of information.
“The more and more we looked at the data, the radio was like a blaring alarm bell, people listened to that,” Morales Rocketto said. “It was like you hit us in the head with a radio.”
From when they first learned that TelevisaUnivision was selling the radio stations to when the deal was announced, it took about 85 days, Valencia said.
Valencia first planned to buy one station and sought the help of Tom Castro, a Houston capital investor who once owned as many as 53 different radio stations.
“She felt like she wanted me to help her understand where the news deserts were in the Latino community, because she wanted to see if she could address those, to increase the civic awareness of the Latino community and ultimately civic participation,” Castro said.
“I’d always wanted to use radio for this purpose, but you know, building a business with backers and investors, they never let us do that much of this in my businesses — so I thought I had a duty to help,” he said.
Valencia and Morales Rocketto said they had to muster their network’s collective clout — describing it as a “Latino shed build” — as Univision was already on the “2-yard line” in finding buyers.
“Univision was like, ‘Who are these ladies? They’ve never really done anything in the radio business, they’re not media types,” Morales Rocketto said. “We really had to rely on our community to call for us, to say, ‘Take them seriously’… and to Univision’s credit, they realized we were serious and took our call.”
Tom Chavez, an entrepreneur who invests in technology and digital companies and who helped purchase the radio station, said his support makes sense because he believes in the mission of Valencia and Morales Rocketto – as well as the potential of Latino entrepreneurship.
“One of the tricky things about our community is a certain restraint when it comes to wealth,” he said. “Latins need to respect values of putting family first, but also recognize that wealth matters, right?”
Chavez said being a minority partner brings that all together, while the purchase helps preserve the specific cultures of different Latino regions — from Texas-Mexican culture in the Rio Grande Valley to Cuban culture. in Miami.
Valencia and Morales Rocketto say the radio stations are just the beginning. “Radio is the first platform for which we launched Latino Media Network,” said Valencia. “But the true vision is ultimately to build a multi-platform audio company,” not only to distribute through their own funds, but to others, especially Spanish-language broadcasters.
The radio stations they now own in the Rio Grande Valley are an AM sports station, an FM station that plays “Spanish oldies” and another FM station that plays regional Mexican music. Valencia said their goal is to make sure there are more sources of entertainment and information so that “Latinos can form their own opinions.”
