Growing up in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Stephanie Valencia would tune in with her family on weekend mornings to a public radio station playing Mexican music and call in song dedications to relatives.
That sort of local, cultural appeal is what Valencia, 40, and her business partner, Jess Morales Rocketto, 36, say they want to cultivate and maximize at the 18 mostly Spanish language radio stations they bought last year from TelevisaUnivision.
Quietly and with little notice, the two Latinas and their newly found Latino Media Network (LMN) began operations March 30 at three radio stations in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, a region of highly-coveted Latino votes that has drawn renewed attention in recent election cycles.
There was far more fanfare and blowback last summer, when the Latinas’ $60 million purchase of the 18 stations, including these three valley stations, became public.
That news triggered an outcry from Republicans, who asserted the buy would silence conservative voices, even though conservative media owners have been expanding into Spanish-language media as well.
Valencia and Morales Rocketto, who worked for former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton respectively, have downplayed their partisan backgrounds and fended off conservatives’ criticism that they secured financing from an investment firm associated with the foundation of liberal philanthropist George Soros. Repeatedly, they have said they do not plan to use the stations to push the Democratic Party’s message.
In a recent interview with NBC News, the two women said their vision is to harness Latino cultural touchstones in music, sports and entertainment to build trusted news and consumer information sources.
Few Latino owners — but many listeners
Lost in last summer’s commotion has been the fact that the two Latinas, neither hugely wealthy, have barged into the ranks of majority media ownership. Few other Latinos are found there — Latinos were majority owners in only 9% of FM and 3% of…
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