Not the Retiring Kind : Teddy Fregosa has been a songwriter and a bullfighter, but radio is where he has excelled the most, as on-air talent and management. : Teddy Fregosa has been a bullfighter and songwriter, but radio is where he’s excelled the most.

Stepping across the threshold of Teddy Fregosa’s modest Sunset Boulevard office is something like passing through a time portal. Decades-old photos of long-dead or retired personalities from the fledgling days of Spanish-language radio in Los Angeles fill the room, and Fregosa is quickly waxing nostalgic about a time when hard-drinking station owners sold their signals for just a few thousand dollars and deejays “had to sell ads and collect [payments] and sweep the floors.”

“But it was fun,” he adds with a bright smile. “It was different. It was . . . very romantic.”

Today, Southern California’s top Spanish-language stations are worth several million dollars, deejays pull down six-figure salaries without going near a broom, and the romance has largely given way to the pressures of big business. But while Fregosa, general manager of XRPS-AM (1090), may not be having as much fun as he did in the old days, he has never considered getting out.

“I’m going to retire,” he promises, “the day I die.”

That day figures to be a long way off. Through Fregosa recently turned 72, he looks at least 15 years younger and keeps a schedule that people half his age would have trouble matching, traveling frequently, meeting regularly with advertisers--even taking occasional turns behind the microphone.

But perhaps the clearest sign that Fregosa remains in top form came last November when he outmaneuvered a number of competitors to win the broadcast rights to Anaheim Angels baseball for the next two seasons.

“Orange County is very rich in Spanish-speaking people,” says Fregosa. “I’m going to do a lot of shows [from Anaheim Stadium]. I want people to go out and actually see the Angels.”

Because XPRS’s powerful 50,000-watt clear-channel signal can be heard in a number of Western states as well as parts of Mexico, the station’s broadcasts have the potential to build the Angels fan base.

Simply the announcement that the team intends to carry their games in Spanish this year has already helped the organization’s image. The Angels were widely criticized for halting their Spanish-language broadcasts under Gene Autry’s ownership six years ago. When Disney took control of the team early in the 1995 season, one of the first things they did was reach out to Orange County’s Latino population.

XPRS carried the broadcasts until they were stopped in an apparent cost-cutting move. At the time, the Spanish-language announcers did not travel with the team, calling home games live and translating the English-language play-by-play of selected road games. This season, the Angels say, the Spanish-language broadcasters will call the action live for all 162 regular-season games.

Although XPRS on Jan. 1 launched an aggressive promotional campaign touting their association with the Angels, a team spokesman has refused to comment on the Spanish-language radio contract saying only that “some things still need to be worked out.”

Among the details yet to be resolved are the naming of the announcers. Fregosa, mindful of Southern California’s huge Mexican population, says he’d like to see the team hire Mexican announcers in an effort to build a rapport with the audience.

Yet despite both his longevity and shrewdness as a businessman, Fregosa’s greatest asset is his success in judging talent. He helped launch the U.S. careers of major personalities such as Jaime Jarrin, Humberto Luna, Pepe Barreto, Amalia Gonzalez, Pepe Rolon and Antonio Gonzalez, among others.

As a group, Fregosa’s students have helped build Los Angeles into the largest, most diverse Spanish-language radio market in the United States.

“He hired me without even listening to me,” marvels Barreto, whose morning show on KLVE-FM (107.9) has topped the local Arbitron ratings for most of the past three years. “He helped me so much and I am so grateful to him. I will always be thankful to Teddy Fregosa for everything that I am.

“He has helped a lot of people. He’s one of a kind.”

The secret to finding talent, Fregosa insists, is simple: Just give people a chance.

“I believe in the talent and I believe in the truthfulness of the presentation,” he says. “How can you tell if you have a good boxer unless you give him some fights? Or if a bullfighter is good if you don’t give him some corridos?”

Which isn’t to say Fregosa suffers fools lightly. Gentlemanly polite and mannerly at most times, he is also old-fashioned to a fault and can frequently be difficult to please.

“I can spot a phony a mile away. If [a deejay] is bad, he will have a very short life with me,” Fregosa promises. “I have a bad temper. I’m a very nice man, but if I don’t like something. . . .”

As an example, he tells the story of his most recent discovery, XPRS morning deejay Carlos Magana, a dynamic 25-year-old newcomer whom Fregosa describes as “very talented.” Yet the first time he saw Magana waiting outside his office, Fregosa sternly directed him to the bathroom.

“But I’m not here to use the bathroom. I’m here for a job,” Magana protested.

“ ‘Well, then go to the bathroom and take that earring out,’ ” Fregosa recalls ordering him. “When he got back, I said, ‘OK, you’re hired. You start tomorrow.’ Today he drives a BMW and his second car is a Mercedes.”

And he hasn’t worn the earring since.

Born 20 seconds into Christmas morning of 1925 in a small-town church in the Mexican state of Jalisco, Fregosa almost failed to make it to Christmas afternoon when he was unable to breathe on his own. The priest, who had given Fregosa’s parents a place to stay after their car broke down, quickly baptized the newborn, who recovered before the last rites became necessary.

That wasn’t the last time Fregosa, one of 16 children, would tempt fate, however. At the age of 14, he left home to become a bullfighter.

“But I was a bad bullfighter,” he remembers.

Apparently he had enough talent--or speed--to survive two years in the ring before turning to an only slightly less cutthroat profession--music. And he has done demonstrably better at that, composing a number of hits, including “Sabras que te querio,” a Latin American standard that has been recorded by more than 300 artists, from Javier Solis to Placido Domingo.

His nascent musical talents drew the attention of two deejays in Mexico City who urged him to supplement his then-meager songwriting salary with a regular job on the radio. To qualify, however, he had to take a government exam.

“And by the grace of God, I passed,” Fregosa says. “That night, the regular announcer was drunk, [so] I had the chance to be on the air. And ever since, I haven’t quit.”

He came to Los Angeles in 1950, landing first at KRKD-AM (1150), where he broadcast a two-hour Spanish-language show each morning beginning at 4 a.m. Three years later, he jumped to KWKW, and when the station switched to full-time Spanish-language programming a year later, Fregosa helped ease the transition.

“He is the greatest all-round talent I’ve ever seen in Spanish radio,” says Howard Kalmenson, president and founder of the 20-station Lotus Communications group, which includes KWKW.

Fregosa worked at KWKW for 22 years before leaving in 1975 to manage his own station. In short order, he leased the Baja signal that once broadcast Wolfman Jack and turned it into Spanish-language salsa station XPRS, beaming the signal back to Southern California in direct competition with KWKW.

Today, XPRS plays mostly Mexican regional music, making it one of just two AM stations in the Los Angeles market to maintain that format. In the past five months alone, three local Spanish-language AMs--including KWKW--have dropped their music programming in favor of 24-hour talk radio, a trend Fregosa finds uncomforting.

“Here, Spanish radio is among copycats,” he says. “No matter what idea you put on, [others] will copy you immediately. The radio is not in the hands of people that actually speak Spanish. They don’t know, they don’t supervise their people. They just talk about the money, the figures, how much they bill and what is their position in the ratings.

“And that’s wrong. Morally, it’s wrong.”

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New approach: KLAX-FM (97.9), the first Spanish-language station to top the Arbitron ratings in Los Angeles, has revamped its programming after losing nearly two-thirds of its listenership during the past six years.

On Jan. 1, Martin Fabian became the station’s new music director, replacing morning co-host Juan Carlos Hidalgo, who is KLAX’s director of operations. And although the station will maintain its emphasis on Mexican regional music, Fabian has imported three new deejays from Guadalajara and added a number of new programs. In addition to Fabian, the new voices include Tomas Rubio, Pepe Garza and Alberto Martin Perez, who have earned a reputation for turning around struggling stations in Mexico. They promise they’re going to do the same at KLAX, but without resorting to “radio pornografico,” the shock-jock format other stations have used.

New shows include “Como Te Xtrano,” a Spanish-language oldies program hosted by Fabian, and “La Lucha de las Estrellas,” in which Garza invites listeners to call in and vote for which of two competing artists they want to hear.

KLAX’s popular morning team of Hidalgo and “El Peladillo” have been moved to the afternoon drive-time slot.

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Joining the team: The Dodgers and their Spanish-language flagship station, KWKW-AM (1330), have added veteran Pepe Yniquez to their radio team for the 1998 season. Yniguez, who pinch-hit for regular play-by-play men Rene Cardenas and Jaime Jarrin on two road trips last season, will handle special broadcast assignments and work in the team’s community relations department.

Yniguez, a general-assignment reporter at KWKW, has hosted the occasional post-game show “Hablando Con Los Dodgers” since 1993. Last season he also handled play-by-play duties for Fox Sports Americas during the American League playoffs and major league baseball’s All-Star Game.