Commentary: Could Univision Flip One Station to English? (Jan 19, 2010)

In July of 1998, Jacor once owned 102.9 and 106.5 as part of its then-ten station radio cluster (it controlled two Mexican-owned stations on 690 AM and 91.1 FM). Jacor was a year before being swallowed entirely by Clear Channel. News came that Jacor was purchasing Nationwide's radio station group because the latter was getting out of the radio station business. In the month before the great merger and format flip off in August, The Eagle playing classic rock was on 94.1, Magic old school oldies was on 95.7, K-JOY adult contemporary was on 102.9, and Q106 hot adult contemporary was on 106.5.

We come to August. Jacor bought out Nationwide, resulting in the purchase of the 94.1 and 95.7 channels, but forcing Jacor to sell off their properties at 102.9 and 106.5 to Heftel Broadcasting (which was later folded into Univision radio), which changed their languages to Spanish and introduced a K-Love format on 102.9 and a Regional Mexicana format on 106.5. The Eagle was grounded at 94.1 while KJOY (KJQY) moved from 102.9 over there in August. Also in August, Q106 died at age 11 as Jacor retained the Magic 95.7 soul format there. Channel 933 segueued from a dance station into a Top 40 station.

The two stations on 102.9 and 106.5 were the result of Jacor minimizing its potential competetion by selecting a Spanish-language broadcaster to dump their stations into, thus, eliminating two English-language stations in the San Diego market, while helping Jacor become a more dominant force in San Diego radio.

Remember that 102.9 and 106.5 were acquired in a sale to eliminate two English-language competetors to Jacor, not to add a new English-language competetor to the market.

Now comes a whole bunch of thoughts on what was posted on sdradio.net on Friday. "Was that Jerry Cesak at 1 America Plaza at Univision Radio?"

Now unless Jeff and Jer can speak fluent Espaņol, they won't be a new Spanish-language morning show team on either of the two stations Univision owns. They can, however, be on one of the two if Univision decides that San Diego needs a new English-language music competetor in the market and could hire Jeff and Jer to theoritically help launch a possible new format that could take on their old home at Star 94.1, or maybe Sophie 103.7 where they were once rumored to be their next morning home.

What else could happen is that Univision could sell a share of one of its stations, possibly the underperforming 102.9, to Jeff and Jer, who could then be able to not only host mornings, but to also supply programming outside of their morning show daypart to the station, while Univision San Diego's staff continues to handle sales to 102.9 as usual.

A better possibility is for Univision to move its more sucessful La Nueva programming to 102.9, paving the way for Jeff and Jer to help launch a possible return of Q106's hot adult contemporary to the San Diego airwaves. The station could be programmed with live and local deejays most around the clock, take live phone-in requests, have the deejays talk up the post to the songs, bring back some simple radio contests, program some lively dance-leaning rock and pop from today as well as flashing back to the 00s, 90s, and 80s on occasion.

Univision could then shop its displaced programming formats it had on 102.9 to one of more Mexican-owned radio broadcasters. They could put their brands like Recuerdo, Viva, K-Love onto them by using its staff to provide sales and programming for them.

But another big question to ponder is where would Dave, Shelly, and Chainsaw would next appear? It looks like Clear Channel-owned KGB-FM has given up on the team and has taken out an ad in the trades for an open morning show position with several qualifications. Huh? I thought you don't have to know and travel around San Diego in order to work at Clear Channel. Oops. My bad. Only voice-tracked deejays from another city are excused from such duties, unless Clear Channel can afford to foot the travel bills.

A very long shot for either of the morning show teams would be the newly-relocated KSIQ 96.1 that moved from Brawley to Campo on January 9th. I drove around the better part of San Diego metro, and the only place I could get the Campo signal was on a summit on highway 52. Until KSIQ gets a Santee booster ready, reception of KSIQ would continue to be a no-show.

Who knows? Mike Halloran might take a trip to KSIQ and make them flip it to something like punk country in Espaņol!