Christian radio coming, in Spanish

By Timothy Pratt

Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2007 | 6:56 a.m.

Dios is coming. To Hawthorne. To Cactus Springs. To Glendale.

And soon the word of God, en Espanol, will be heard in the Las Vegas Valley.

That's because Nevada's first Spanish-language Christian radio station will begin broadcasting next week, followed almost certainly by several more in the next few years.

The first, run by Almavision, a California-based evangelical organization, will launch its 24/7 programming next week from Hawthorne, a town about 250 miles northwest of the valley. KAVB 98.7's signal will reach Carson City and Reno to the north, first extending about 150 miles to the south, and reaching the Las Vegas area's 450,000-plus Hispanics by early 2008.

The other stations will come later, having taken advantage of a rare 10-day window in mid-October for nonprofit organizations to apply for radio station licenses with the Federal Communications Commission. Eight applications for Spanish-language religious radio stations are among the nearly 50 noncommercial radio station applications filed during that time.

The FCC could take months to respond to the applications, after which the ministries and churches involved would have up to three years to build studios and broadcasting towers.

One thing is clear, however: Those who work with the Word have taken notice of the valley's and Nevada's growing Hispanic population, just as the Democratic Party did in pushing for the state's first-ever early presidential caucus Jan. 19, as well as dozens of marketing gurus and activist groups in recent years.

"This shows that we will continue to grow ... and that (the applicants) are securing their future," said Eddie Escobedo, who in 1980 founded El Mundo, the valley's first Spanish-language newspaper.

Juan Martinez, assistant dean for Fuller Theological Seminary's Hispanic Church Studies Program, said the interest in setting up shop in Nevada on the part of Christian Spanish-language stations also is evidence of several cultural traits among Hispanics.

First, he said, Hispanics are increasingly converting from the Roman Catholic faith of their homelands to other denominations. He cited a Pew Hispanic Center survey in April in which nearly 68 percent identified themselves as Catholic, while nearly 20 percent identified themselves as Protestant. Eight percent said they were secular.

Also, radio is an especially important medium for Hispanics, a fact made evident to the rest of the country last year when several nationally syndicated Hispanic disc jockeys revealed they had played a key role in organizing massive pro-immigration marches.

Martinez said radio's function as a mass media, popular culture tool among Hispanics extends to the way Spanish-language Christian radio stations develop their programs.

Rafael Porras, Almavision's engineer, said 80 percent of his station's programming is music. "The radio and music is an important part of Hispanic life," Porras said. "On our stations, we have danceable rhythms - but with religious content."

Porras said his organization chose Las Vegas as its No. 2 market after Los Angeles, its base, when the FCC held an auction of licenses in 2005. "We didn't look to New York or Miami," he said.

It has taken Almavision until now to build its tower and complete paperwork changing the station's status from commercial to educational.

Porras noted how Hispanics began moving from Los Angeles to the valley in the past decade-plus and began calling Almavision's California offices, asking about its TV programming. So the organization started a TV station here in 2003.

When the same thing happened with radio, the Hawthorne site was sought. For technical reasons, the new station's signal won't be able to reach the valley until next year.

Florida-based Oscar Aguero Ministry is one of the eight applicants that might build its own Nevada station in the next few years, if the FCC approves its application.

"Our purpose is to reach our people with the Word," Roger Martinez, Aguero's assistant, said of his project, planned for Cactus Springs.

Cactus Springs is about 50 miles north of the valley, and, as with Almavision, the station's signal initially would not reach the Las Vegas area. But Martinez said he's not worried about that because he believes Hispanics also will begin arriving in rural areas of the state.

"Hispanics will keep coming," he said. "We're going to be around for a while."