Albuquerque Journal from Albuquerque, New Mexico • 32

PERSONALITIES Friday, January 24, 2003 D2 Albuquerque Journal Spanish-language radio voices silenced 'Mullets' a blast from past "EMPRESS OF SPANISH Amparo Garcia had been reporting the news In Spanish on local radio stations the past 34 years. She Is now thinking about retiring. from PAGE D1 veteran newswoman who has provided reports in Spanish for more than 34 years in Albuquerque. She was doing news both at KABQ and KXKS. Gone, too, was Holding Zepeda, the wisecracking young radio personality who held down the morning drive-time slot on KXKS.

And gone was Ada Casas, the soothing voice on the radio between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. whose popular on-air mercado helped people buy and sell everything from wedding dresses to bedroom furniture. Weeks before KXKS was changed to a satellite feed, another veteran of the Spanish airwaves, Alonzo Lucero, was forced to leave his job as a DJ on KABQ because the station changed to the Fox Sports Network. KABQ was the oldest Spanish-language station in Albuquerque.

KABQ and KXKS are owned by Clear Channel Communications of San Antonio, Texas. Clear Channel's general manager for New Mexico, Cindy Schloss, said the format changes were driven by listenership ratings. "The ratings didn't justify continuing to do what we were doing on KXKS and KABQ," Schloss said. "The new formats give us the opportunity to have national talent that we couldn't afford on a local level." Schloss said did not show a strong demand for local news in Spanish. The changes at KABQ and KXKS were preceded, in October, by format changes at two other Spanish stations: KRZY-FM (105.9) and KRZY-AM (1450).

These stations changed from soft contemporary Spanish hits with local announcers to satellite-fed regional Mexican music. There are no local DJs on those stations now, no local news updates, and brief traffic updates provided by Metro Traffic, a local radio traffic service. Newscaster Amparo Garcia said she had a foreboding of the end of local Spanish radio here. "When they took KABQ off the air, that was the end," she her to move away from the microphone, however. "She is the empress of Spanish radio, and she absolutely has not been treated with the respect she deserves by the radio corporations that own the various stations in town," said Mike Santullo, a longtime Albuquerque radio personality, who also coordinates the Newsline for the Blind as part of his job with the New Mexico Commission for the Blind.

Santullo said he knows Garcia from working in radio, and Garcia also volunteers five days a week reading news in Spanish on Newsline. "She has a large following, is well respected and can hit the ground running at any Spanish station," said Santullo. "It would really be a shame for a gem like Amparo to not be working and giving to this community, especially to the Spanish-speaking people of this state." Santullo said he thinks the current state of Spanish radio is going to change. "These companies think they can replace the local Spanish music and the local Spanish radio personalities with music linked via satellite," he said. "But they are not making any contribution or forming any connections to the community that way.

A successful station is one that has local attachment to the community." Santullo said KKOB-AM (770) is the best example of a successful radio station with its roots in the community. "It's involved locally at every level," he said about KKOB. "And it has been around now 80 years." He said KANM, owned by local businessman and radio personality John Aragon, is on the right track. "He has tapped into the beat of the local community," said Santullo. "That station is a good example of what needs to be done.

He supports local businesses, local charities and he knows his audience." Garcia said she misses her audience and already misses her job as a newscaster. "Things have changed for Spanish radio, and I'm not sure it is for the good of anyone," she said. said. "I knew it wasn't going to be long for the other station that had local news in Spanish." To add to the confusion, one radio company recently added Spanish stations to the market. In November, Simmons Media Group changed its KOZY-FM (101.7) from soft music to a regional satellite-fed Mexican music format.

Simmons also changed its KRQS-FM (101.3) from country-western to regional Mexican music, also a satellite feed from California. Simmons converted the stations to Spanish just before they were sold to Hispanic Broadcasting Corp. in December. Part of the business The changes in Spanish radio did not include places for local radio hosts such as Garcia, Lucero, Zepeda or Casas. Only Lucero is currently working in radio.

He has a show on KANM-AM (1600) from 8 a.m. to noon on Saturdays and Sundays, which plays music by local New Mexico artists, as well as Motown and 70s music. "All this is part of the business in radio," said Lucero, 66. "But I think what really hurts is that they cut off the local connection and treated the Spanish listeners with little respect." Lucero, who has more than 40 years of Spanish-language radio experience in Albuquerque, said the big radio companies in town, and across the country, are not community conscious anymore. "For them, it's the bottom and the listeners don't matter," he said.

"That's why I like the situation at KANM. It's a small station, owned locally by someone who cares about the people that tune in. It's a shame, But I think KANM will be on the right track with what matters in the community. The station has already shown it cares." But what about the radio personalities who no longer have a station that needs their services? Zepeda said he is working construction jobs since he was fired from KXKS. "I miss the he said.

"I loved what we did on the air, and I loved the connection we had with people. I think they liked that they could hear news from Albuquerque and news out of Chihuahua on our station. I think they liked hearing the high school sports scores and others in Spanish. Now, nothing." Zepeda, 32, had been on the romPAGEDI older siblings who did) these muscle-car anthems were aural shorthand for the promise of a Saturday night. Admit it: You know the lyrics to most, if not all, of these songs and sometimes, on a Friday afternoon, after work, when they come on the car radio and no one is looking, you play air guitar at traffic lights.

We all have bad taste buried within us, no matter how evolved we are. The White Stripes show our familiarity with the latest Spin cover stories, but Cheap Trick's "Surrender" is as reassuringly uncool as feathered hair. WILD ABOUT HARRY: Since it was announced last week that the fifth Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," will finally come out June 21, tens of thousands of impatient Potter fans are preordering J.K. Rowling's newest book. Within 48 hours of the announcement of the publication date, the book was the top seller on both Amazon.com and Barnes Noble.com.

Neither online bookseller is saying how many books have been preordered thus far. But Amazon.com says advance orders are ahead of those for the last Potter book, 2000's "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," which had 400,000 preorders. At the Rio Grande Valley Library System, 740 people have already put the new Potter book on hold. "We've been taking hold requests (on the new Potter book) for months," said Julia Clarke, assistant director for the 17-branch library system that serves Albuquerque, Bernalillo and Rio Rancho. Clarke said the library system will get around 300 copies of the new Potter book, so preteen Potterphiles will probably be able to check it out before they hit puberty.

To get on the library's hold list, go to any branch or log on to www.cabq.govlibrary. For more Culture Shock, go to www.abqjournal.comweblogsshock. htm. Leanne Potts can be reached at lpottsabqjournal.com. seriously, it paid off with commercials for McDonald's, a muffler chain and other products.

"They would say I'm too old, I would say, 'I'm even Foreman said. "They'd say I was fat, I'd say, 'How about another The jokes weren't the only thing different about his comeback. When he destroyed Joe Frazier in 1973 to win the heavyweight championship, Foreman didn't believe in religion. Then, after an out-of-body experience as he lay bleeding and exhausted after losing to Jimmy Young in 1977, he said he found Jesus Christ. Foreman became an' ordained minister the next year, built a church and started preaching to anyone who would listen.

Ex-champion happy to trade boxing ring for pulpit JOURNAL FILE air since 1995 in Albuquerque. Casas, 39, had worked at KXKS for five years. She said she is planning to work on her family life now that she is off the radio. She and her husband would like to have another baby. "We're going to concentrate on family now," she said.

"But I'm going to miss the listeners." Casas said they were like her second family. "We would get phone calls from them," she said. "I think for some, we were their only connection to people who were in the media and who spoke their language. We had a following. But the company clipped our wings so drastically over the years.

It's an injustice to Spanish speakers." For Garcia, 72, this could be the end of a long and happy career. When Clear Channel took her off the air, she said, "I thought, well, maybe it's time to retire. "I thought I had my time here. I think I served the Spanish listeners well, and I was proud of the job I was doing. It was very depressing to think about.

But you know, I have my family and maybe it's time for me to think about not being on the air." Her listeners don't want When a check came for $1 million, it removed any doubt. Foreman, who got a share of the profit on every grill, reportedly made more than $50 million before Salton asked him to renegotiate so it could make a decent profit. Foreman ended up signing a five-year deal worth $137.5 million to keep his name on the grills and his face in front of the public. His average salary of $27.5 million a year dwarfs his boxing income, which peaked with a $12.5 million purse in 1991 for his unsuccessful heavyweight title challenge against Evander Holyfield. Today, Salton sells 29 George Foreman products, including the Double Knockout, Double Champion grill, which can cook 12 burgers at a time, and the Baby George Roaster.

DAYS $14.00 with super saver classifieds rip urn nr i 2-lRIBUNE fttmt far nil "They were paying me so much they decided to buy me out of it," Foreman said. "It was a phenomenon." It became a phenomenon largely because Foreman is an unabashed salesman, something he learned well when he had to sell himself as a serious contender in 1986 after a 10-year layoff. At the time, he had pretty much gone through the earnings of his first career and, if not broke, was certainly strapped for cash. People laughed at the portly former champion whose weight had ballooned to 315 pounds during his first retirement, but he used it to his advantage by poking even more fun at himself. When the wins began piling, up and Foreman's comeback was being taken a bit more SHARON CEKADATHE ASSOCIATED PRESS CHILD FRIENDLY: George Foreman takes time out to visit with children from the Oshkosh Boys and Girls Club In 1998.

Sl wfMMm Sate from PAGE D1 in the 1970s, a glowering Foreman would refuse to acknowledge them with a grunt, much less an autograph. "In his first career, I never knew what George I was going to deal with day to day," said Bill Caplan, a veteran public relations man Foreman calls his best friend. "I didn't know if it was going to be that sweet kid who won the gold medal and waved the flag, or if it was going to be the other guy with the scowling, intimidating look who was uncooperative. It was like he was two people." Caplan doesn't have to worry anymore. "Today, I always know who I'm going to deal with," he said.

"One of the most wonderful human beings on the planet." Foreman regrets the earlier image. "I wish I would have known then what I know now about people and life," Foreman said. "I'd stare guys down, mistreat people. I thought that's what you had to do to be the heavyweight champ." A similar scene unfolded a few weeks later in Las Vegas, where Foreman stopped as he walked through an arena, knelt to have his picture taken with a child and then patted him on the head. "You're a good man, George," called out a man watching nearby.

That night, he was in a tuxedo to do boxing commentary for HBO. Then, he went straight to the airport to grab the redeye home to Houston. The fights are a fun diversion. The grills are a way to make lots of money. For Foreman, though, the real work takes place on Sundays at his Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, where the congregation knows him as its preacher.

"That's what I do," Foreman said. "I may moonlight as a grillman and all of that But was a royalty check for $3,500. A few months later, a check came for $65,000. "I said, Wow, this thing might he said. 4 LINES 7 LA iim being a preacher is my profession." On this Sunday, his sermon is about how the world's problems today aren't much different than a half -century ago.

Some of his 10 children five boys named George and five daughters are usually in the church listening to the message. "Sometimes," he said, "you get a second chance." His bread and butter On the counter of Foreman's home sits what else a George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine. Foreman said he was reluctant when a friend first saw a grill in an Asian catalog and wanted him to put his name on it. The grill went unused for three months before Foreman's wife finally made him a hamburger on it "I ate it and to my surprise, it was pretty good," Foreman said. At the time, Foreman was at the peak of his comeback after knocking out Michael Moorer to win the heavyweight championship again.

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