As wildfires continue across Los Angeles, radio continues its role as a lifeline while branching out into relief and recovery efforts. For Meruelo Media, operators of Cali 93.9, Power 106, KDAY, and KLOS, it meant pivoting from music to delivering life-saving information.
Radio Ink spoke with Meruelo Media President and CEO Otto Padrón and Senior Vice President of Programming and Content Pio Ferro about their rapid response, the challenges along the way, and the importance of radio as a trusted resource.
Radio Ink: We talked with Alex Silverman about KNX’s All-News format coverage last week. As operators of music stations, your delivery is going to be very different, but no less important. When did you all start your coverage?
Pio Ferro: Tuesday morning, we knew that there was a fire, and it happened to be in the Palisades. By Tuesday afternoon, we knew that this was something.
Otto Padrón: When this started happening, Pio and I were actually at a lunch, not too far away from the office. We started seeing the traffic and we started seeing the smoke and it wasn’t going away. So he immediately jumped into action and I jumped into support. We started kind of taking on different things.
Pio Ferro: I started getting in touch with the morning shows and giving them information for the next day, but by the time Wednesday morning arrived, the thing had gone out of control. So, on Cali 93.9, the morning team came in earlier than normal and just went right into the coverage that we had discussed. Our other stations were trying to find the balance of news and what they normally do, but it was very apparent before those shows were over on Wednesday, that this wasn’t a news event, this was a life event.
The bulk of the coverage has been, and still is, through our morning shows because there’s so much content and talk. Heidi & Frank [on KLOS] is a talk show. On Cali 93.9, if we need to go more talk, we absolutely can and did. Same with Brown Bag Mornings on Power 106 and Romeo on KDAY.
Then it became our street team, our digital department, everybody just trying to get information and point people in the right direction as to where to find resources as we were getting the information.
Otto Padrón: One thing that Pio has been incredibly proactive on is that nobody cracks the mic unless we have the right information, because wrong information at the right time, is worse than no information anytime.
Radio Ink: We’ve heard a lot in the last year – and for good reason – about the power of Hispanic radio because of the engagement and the trust factor with the audience. As a Spanish-language station, how has the Cali 93.9 audience interacted and responded with coverage?
Pio Ferro: Yeah, so number one, the Cali morning show has been spectacular in putting people on the air, sharing their stories, and pointing them to everything that I mentioned in terms of resources. Because the head of the morning show is such a big superstar with Angélica Vale, it carries a certain weight. It’s a trusted source.
Outside of the morning show, we made adjustments to the air shifts we extended just to make sure that we had as much coverage as possible.
Radio Ink: Talking about the balance with music stations. How do you determine the balance – or imbalance – when it comes to distributing information versus “programming as usual” in this situation?
Pio Ferro: From Tuesday evening through Wednesday, the sentiment that I gave to everybody was “Not business as usual.” Not for anybody. Not for anything. Even if you didn’t know anybody in harm’s way, you didn’t have kids in school. The air quality is terrible. You didn’t know if the fire would turn and come to you. It affected everybody. And by the way, it’s not over yet.
Radio Ink: Meruelo has transmitters on Mount Wilson that came under significant danger. How did you all monitor and manage that?
Pio Ferro: Otto spent maybe 13 hours on Friday at the transmitter site.
Otto Padrón: I’m here to provide better support for everything that Pio does. As the President, my priority number one is to make sure that I’m providing Pio with the resources he needs by either quickly approving it or just taking it on myself and we had a crisis on Friday. Outside of the threat to the towers themselves, the fire created an issue with generator power at our ABC TV co-share site, which is where we also have KLOS. The electrical malfunction at that site knocked us all off the air for about nine hours.
It was a significant, emotional event. All hands on deck. So I took the duty to go with David Gray, one of our two chief engineers, because I’m a closet engineer. My dad was an engineer.
We had one engineer ready on site, but we have multiple sites up at Wilson and one site at Mount Harvard, which is a secondary hilltop that was massively attacked by the fires the night before. In order for us to get to where we needed to be, it took a Cal Fire crew to help us get through the still-burning material that was on the road, and we are thankful for them.
So we got back on air. It was a long weekend for us, but it was a team effort.
Radio Ink: As for your team, you haven’t just stayed in the studio. You’ve been out on the ground over the weekend. You all have partnered with the Red Cross via your Meruelo Cares program. What goes into taking these initiatives?
Otto Padrón: One thing that we do here is respect legacy. Every station has a brand legacy, and then we also have a legacy in the market. We’re one market deep. We’re not Audacy. We’re not iHeart. We’re not Univision. We know who we are and we’re very aware of that. That makes us unique. And we have a legacy of community service because we are a service company.
It was Friday night when we said we’ve got to do something more than just report on what’s going on. So we activated our street team and with the support of [parent company] Meruelo Group, we started targeting different emergency supply and meal distribution centers in the city.
Pio Ferro: Our street team, along with one of our morning shows, discovered what I call the Epicenter of Help, which is in Santa Anita Race Park. People from all over the area are showing up with water, supplies, and all that. We showed up with our remote truck with a PA system and they said, “Oh my God, we need music to lift spirits and we need your microphone to deliver messages. Can you guys stay?” Yes, absolutely! So that team stayed.
The organizers asked if we could come back tomorrow and as often as possible. So we’ve been there every day and our air staff has been there helping to distribute water and doing whatever it is that’s asked of them.
Our corporate umbrella that owns the brands has been incredibly involved and engaged with us in our efforts.
Radio Ink: Earlier, you mentioned the misinformation that radio stations are fighting in a social media era. In a parallel vein, there is a now-viral post on X that says, “The first three LA fire evacuation maps I checked were all paywalled.” People have strong feelings toward certain media outlets with national scope putting life-saving info behind these increasingly common paywalls. Do you feel like that gives free, broadcast radio even more significance in the modern era?
Pio Ferro: I know what you’re talking about because I see these outlets that are paywalled in my newsfeed, but I ultimately just look at them for the headlines. I can’t speak to this specific example, because I went to LA city information and messages from the governor and the mayor to see what was going on with the fires.
Otto Padrón: AM is a big topic of conversation, as you know. Here’s where AM and FM are critical: it’s instant, free information. You turn to a source that you trust and is trustworthy. You know, I come from a news background. I listen to the news conference every morning and afternoon just like I did during COVID, because I want to make sure that I am getting the best information to put out to our listeners.
We try to be as responsible as possible. We check with each other. We take pride when one of our talent cracks the mic with some critical, vetted information. That’s what makes us professional broadcasters. That glue in our community is a trusted voice that cracks the mic in times of trouble. When the electricity has gone out and when there is no cell connection, you can always turn to radio.
In this fire, radio has made a difference in our community. I read your interview with Alex from KNX. I’m glad that, as a community, we came together. I’m not talking about a community in LA at large here. I’m talking about our radio community. Because that’s what people have come to expect from radio.
Whether you are on the East Coast with a massive snowstorm, or you’re on the West Coast with a massive firestorm, you better have one thing ready, and that’s radio.
