You may be doing it the right way, and the legal way, BUT, the group that I worked for in "03", I question their business practices.
Then you should focus on a sleazy operator, which has nothing to do with ethnicity. Sleazy operators such as the pedophiles that have recently lost licences, or the ones from the past like Don Burden, occur occasionally and are a reflection on the individual.
Hispanics have owned essentially all the stations in Puerto Rico for 85 years. Yet the only license revocation was against an "Anglo" owner, O Roy Chalk. So would that mean that all non-Hispanic owners are corrupt based on one experience? Your example, assuming even that it is tru, was expanded on by your statement that indicated that such behaviour which you have not witnessed is widespread only because you think Hispanic owners are corrupt.
US banks have shunned hispanic business? Now I question that!
In most markets, banks only have paid attention to Hispanics once the Hispanic presence becomes so large as to be impossible to hide. I can regale you with stories from big Hispanic markets in the US where an advertiser said "I don't want those people in my bank" or where a dealer associiation for a higher end car said, "your listeners don't buy my cars, they steal them." Even today, a third of the Fortune 500 consumer goods companies son't use Hispanic media. That is "shun" with capital letters.
Fifteen years ago, we didn't have this problem of hispanics taking over local AM radio stations,
First, why is serving an audience group that has grown into prominence a "problem?" Radio identifies markets, such as lovers of 80's music or partisans of country, and delivers programming. In this case, the growth of the Hispanic group invites stations that have heretofor not been able to find economic success to try a new option that may actually work.
Traditionally, the first stations in a market have switched to Spanish or other ethnic formats because they were unable to compete in general market. As the market develops, then larger facilities come in.
and leaving suburban communities without local English service.
Very marginal and unprofitable stations generally render much in the way of service. And the idea that small stations provide some kind of special suburban service that the metro flamethrowers don't provide is one I find to be lacking in many ways.
The one and only locally owned and operated FM in this market, Lighting 100, WRLT-FM has had offers from hispanic groups to buy the station with money figures that are so unreal, one wonders where the money is coming from!
Hispanic radio is the only growing sector in radio today. The money comes from the growth of this sector and the fact that advertisers are more and more liekly to target Hispanics today.
As your local Hispanic ocmmunity grows, it is very likely that there will be bigger and better Hispanic stations... look at Atlanta, where now there are two good signal FMs in Spanish, as opposed to a few years ago when the stations were daytime AMs, defective coverage AMs or rimshot Class A FMs.
