Long before Ricky Martin became mainstream, Mike Rojas was selling salsa dance contests and Central American sounds to corporate America. Rojas’ company, North Hollywood-based California All Stars, has been producing a radio show, a television show and concerts geared to Latino audiences for the last five years. And business is booming. “We bring the Hispanic market to business,” Rojas said. “I saw a need for corporate America to be advised of the market.” California All Stars’ programs are something of a hybrid between infomercials and traditional entertainment. Rojas buys the radio and TV air time himself, directly from stations, and then charges advertisers to “sponsor” the shows. Both the radio and TV show are called “Adelante Hispanos,” and Rojas hosts both shows. They’re a mix of community affairs-type talk programming and Latin-influenced music. Rojas intersperses these elements with liberal doses of pitches for the sponsor’s product or service, and sometimes even has sponsor representatives on as guests. Other guests include Latin recording artists, politicians and community leaders. The radio show, which has been running once a week on KALI-AM 1430 for the past four years, airs on Saturdays from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. If a sponsor is willing to pay more, Rojas tries to buy time and air the show on other Spanish-language stations in Los Angeles and other cities, as well. The success of the radio show spawned the 30-minute live television spinoff, which launched in September. It airs on Sundays 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on KJLA-TV Channel 57. The formula seems to be working, thanks in part to corporate advertisers’ growing interest in reaching the Latino market. Revenues at California All Stars jumped from $585,000 in 1997 to $4.5 million in 1999, qualifying it to be listed in Hispanic Magazine as one of the fastest-growing Latino businesses in the nation last year. “When we first started, it was very hard to get corporations to sign on,” Rojas said. “It’s still never easy, but they know now that there’s a huge market there.” Rojas said he focuses his shows on the positive aspects of the Latino community, such as the program on a pregnant teen-ager who worked her way off welfare and is now succeeding. Some of the shows’ sponsors have included Tenet Healthcare Corp., Tower Health and the American Association of Retired People. Waldo Lopez, director of economic research at the Tomas Rivera Institute in Claremont, said the success of California All Stars is not surprising because advertisers are increasingly realizing that Latinos are projected to be the largest demographic group in the L.A. area by 2020. “There is a market there, and this market is growing because immigration hasn’t stopped,” Lopez said. While the amount of corporate advertising on Spanish-language television has mushroomed in the last year, radio has attracted fewer major advertisers, possibly because of demographic disparities. Spanish-language radio audiences tend to be immigrants who didn’t grow up in the United States and don’t have a good command of the English language, Lopez said. But there is also a portion that listens to the Spanish-language stations for the cultural music. “(Spanish-language) radio stations are looking for a very specific market,” Lopez said. “They’re only catering to Spanish-speaking individuals. I don’t listen to Spanish radio, but I watch Spanish TV.” Rojas said he remains confident that advertisers will keep increasing their focus on Spanish-language broadcast media, both TV and radio. “Compared to total advertising dollars, those spent on the Latino market are proportionally way lower, so there’s room for improvement,” Rojas said. Rojas, a Colombia native who moved to the United States in his teens, began his career as a musician in the 1970s playing percussion for salsa bands in the Los Angeles area. He recorded a number of Spanish-language salsa records before venturing into promoting concerts and other musical events. “I was born a musician,” Rojas said. “This is an extension of that.” Rojas said a turning point in his career was when the Miller Brewing Co. approached him in 1988 about sponsoring a Latino-oriented concert that he was organizing. (In the mid-1980s Rojas had begun organizing free concerts in Griffith Park and elsewhere, featuring Latino acts.) “Miller came to me,” said Rojas. “They wanted to do some event geared at the Hispanic community.” AT & T; Corp. signed on as a co-sponsor and the result, The Miller Sound Express, evolved into a national tour of free concerts geared to the Latino community. California All Stars still organizes concerts for corporate sponsors. Anheuser-Busch Cos. sponsored a salsa contest tour, called Michelob’s Queremos Salsa, and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc. sponsored a Central American concert series, called Sabor A Centro America. Last year, the company organized Cinco de Mayo concerts in Griffith Park and at San Francisco’s Delores Park.
