Howling Success : Oxnard’s Spanish-Language Radio Lobo Gains Popularity With Outlandish Antics

Day breaks at Radio Lobo, Oxnard’s new Spanish-language radio station, with a comical wolf’s howl. Then the lunacy begins.

An eclectic mixture of psychics and on-air swap meets, Mexican top-40 music and tabloid talk-show commentary, the station has been gaining popularity among Ventura County’s Latino population for its outlandish antics.

Purchased last September by longtime deejay and Santa Paula native Alberto Vera, KOXR is perhaps best-known for “La Voz del Pueblo,” a daily call-in segment where deejays pose questions to listeners--ranging from the reputation of the Oxnard Police Department to the myth of the Latin lover.

“We’re all interested in sex, in our future, our health, the opposite sex,” said the husky 49-year-old Vera. “That’s why the tabloids exist.”

But in addition to discussions on everything from legalizing prostitution in Ventura County to the power of curanderos, or spiritual healers, the station takes strong stands on serious issues affecting Latinos, such as the scandal-scarred Mexican government, racism and Proposition 187.

Listeners apparently pay attention. A group of about 200 farm workers who walked off the celery fields last December and marched through Oxnard to protest Proposition 187 said they got the idea from Radio Lobo, which had urged Latinos to skip work for one day in a show of clout.

“We attack these hard issues that are on people’s minds,” Vera said. “What’s going on that people are talking about, or maybe aren’t talking about but are thinking about. We don’t pull any punches. We say it like it is.”

Vera said he spent much of his childhood listening to Mexican music in his mother’s Santa Paula bar. But like many U.S.-born Latinos, he could not speak Spanish fluently, and the music’s colorful lyrics eluded him.

When he was 14 years old he got a job at now-defunct KSPA in Santa Paula, Ventura County’s first Spanish-language station, cleaning up, sweeping the floors--anything to get closer to the radio.

One year later, Vera was on the air hosting his first radio show, a nighttime farm report in English where he discussed the price of beef and other esoteric agricultural issues. Meanwhile he studied the other deejays--learning Spanish as well as on-air technique.

The “Brown Bear,” as he was known on the air, became a popular morning deejay, working at Spanish-language stations in Albuquerque, N.M., Denver and other Southwest cities before moving into the corporate side of radio in Oxnard and Los Angeles.

In 1987, Vera launched Antenna, a trade magazine for the Spanish-language entertainment industry with a circulation of 20,000, published out of an office in Oxnard. The publication struggled for its first four years, losing money along the way. But it eventually became a great success--and a cash cow for Vera.

With money he earned from Antenna, now based in Camarillo, Vera bought the then-struggling KOXR last year for $350,000 and renamed it Radio Lobo.

The station, which mainly caters to 25- to 54-year-old, working-class Latinos, has since moved from last to second in Ventura County’s competitive Spanish-language radio ratings behind KXLM, and its advertising revenue has doubled, Vera said. “Laser” KXLM is Oxnard’s most popular radio station.

One of Vera’s deejays, Marco Antonio del Castillo, was an on-air personality at KSPA when Vera began his career there as a janitor. Del Castillo moved on to KOXR 30 years ago and has weathered the station’s many ups and downs.

“It was not the best, but it was the only one,” del Castillo said of KOXR’s early days, when it owned the Spanish-language airwaves after KSPA became a country music station. “But then another station came in and took over. Now, with the new owner, we’re (rising) again.”

Six months ago Abel Estrada was working at a McDonald’s in Oxnard, hoping he would be promoted to manager after four years on the job. Now “La Lobita,” as he is known on the air, is Radio Lobo’s star morning deejay.

Estrada, a local broadcasting student, impressed Vera, who believed the 32-year-old had talent. But he had to face his own prejudices before letting Estrada--who is openly gay--on the air, he acknowledged.

“But then I thought about it, and I said ‘So what?’ It taught me a lesson,” Vera said.

It also proved to be a wise business move for Vera, who found himself with a surprise hit deejay.

“You would think, ‘No, this can’t happen on Spanish radio. They won’t listen to him, with all the machismo,’ ” Vera said. “But he’s on the air in the morning, and people love him.”

Estrada is first to acknowledge that Radio Lobo’s offbeat call-in programs have played a major part in the station’s success.

“We’re not all music,” Estrada said. “The informational programs have set us apart. Infidelity, that’s a big topic. So is the Mexican government.”

Radio Lobo’s most popular show is “Senora Rebecca,” an Oxnard psychic who provides listeners with information about their love lives and financial future by listening to the vibrations of their voices.

“She has some credibility,” Vera said. “Even with me, she has surprised me with how often she has been right.”

“El Mercadito,” Radio Lobo’s daily on-air swap meet, draws more than 100 calls an hour from listeners looking to buy or sell everything from paintings to bird cages. But more than 50% of the talk on the show centers around housing, as farm workers and other low-income laborers look for rooms, garages--anywhere to live.

Antonio Virgen, who works at the El Rey Panaderia bakery in downtown Oxnard, said he listens to “El Mercadito” every morning, hoping to find that elusive bargain.

“There may be a good opportunity sometime,” said the 22-year-old Virgen. “But I still haven’t bought anything.”

Ramon Corona, who also works at the bakery, said he likes the station’s serious commentary on the Mexican government and local police. His co-workers laugh at that suggestion, however, saying all Corona listens for is talk about sex and infidelity.

To Vera, the programming mixture seems perfectly logical, just like his requirement that listeners howl before dedicating a song, or his decision to replay the station’s trademark wolf’s howl six times every hour.

“People driving down the street hear that howl,” Vera said, “and they know exactly what they are listening to.”