KHRO makes the switch

Well, it finally happened.

After rumors began surrounding the fate of Air America programming on KHRO in El Paso, TX, the station finally made the switch yesterday. In place of liberal talk, the station is now playing oldies. KHRO is retaining their two locally-produced talk shows hosted by Paul Strelzin and David Karlrusher.

Local management of the Entravision-owned station, including general manager David Candelaria, did not explain their decision to dump Air America. In fact, they neglected to even tell their employees.

"I didn't know we were going to flip (the station) today," said promotions director Abel Rodriguez referring to the format change.

Strelzin himself said he was left in the dark about the decision.

"I'm glad to be on the air, but I think (the change) was handled childishly," Strelzin told his radio audience in an obvious dig at his bosses.

Some listeners called Strelzin's program to lash out against the management of the radio station.

"We're going to write letters to your boss," said an agitated caller. Another listener wrote to say the decision was a "travesty."

Of course, the newspaper mentions that KHRO had difficulty selling advertising for the format. But as always, they never seek out the probable reason for this. KHRO seems like a rather half-assed operation, with a joke of a website, little management involvement, and little promotional presence. The only time anyone ever heard anything about KHRO were on the occasions where they were thinking about dumping the format. In addition, the market demographics worked against it, since the market consists of roughly 82% people of Hispanic origin.

You can read more about KHRO's handling of the format here.