KBRZ Radio

Two years have passed since the sweet strains of country music emanated from the broadcasting tower of local AM radio station KBRZ.

Since then, we've only been able to decipher a few words here and there that have been broadcast from the tower that looms over the KBRZ headquarters in Oyster Creek.

The reason for that is simple -- we no habla Espanol.

Oh, we speak a little Espanol that we learned from school days, but we haven't managed to retain all that much. For some reason, the one phrase I personally have total recall of is this: "Ay caramba, se me olvido mi cuaderno!"

That means, "Dad gummit, I forgot my notebook!"

Anyhow, KBRZ was sold a couple years ago for $700,000 to a fellow named Roberto Villareal.

That's a lot of money, and we would be the last to try to dictate to Sr. Villareal what he should do with his radio station, especially since he laid down so many samoleans for the only AM station in B'port.

As for his programming, well, it wouldn't have been our first choice.

KBRZ now broadcasts religious programming in Spanish. Or, at least it did the last time we listened.

While that doubtless has enriched the lives of many within earshot, it hasn't done much for those of us whose primary language is English and whose radio programming of choice is good old country western music by the likes of Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and the Carter Family.

So, we just chalked up KBRZ's language switcheroo as a sign of the times, and tuned our car radio buttons to Houston, where English is still widely spoken on the radiowaves.

However, we stumbled across something recently that gives us a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, the only local AM radio station could go back to English.

Recently, Mr. Villareal's Aleluya Christian Broadcasting company bought KFTG in Pasadena for $482,000 from Community Radio Inc. KFTG is a 440 Watt station.

This information was gleaned from a Web site called RadioandRecords.com in the transactions section.

Could this mean that Mr. Villareal might be willing to sell KBRZ?

We don't know. We were unable to reach Mr. Villareal.

Still, maybe he'd be willing to part with KBRZ.

Surely, he will be able to reach a denser population base of folks who like religious broadcasting in Spanish from his radio station in Pasadena, instead of KBRZ, located way down here on the sparsely populated Gulf Coast plain.

'Course, if Mr. Villareal was willing to sell KBRZ, would anyone around here want to buy it and resume broadcasting in a language that the majority of us would understand?

We'd like to think so, but we don't know.

New Ratings

Now, as far as the "sign of the times" we referenced above, consider this.
The Number One rated radio station in the Houston-Galveston market is KLTN-FM, which broadcasts Mexican music.
It had a 6.5 share, according to the latest ratings released on Thursday.
It was followed by KODA, which plays adult contemporary tunes, with a 5.8 share. KODA was top dog during the last Arbitron ratings.
Third place finisher in this ratings period was KBXX-FM, which plays music classified as CHR/Rhythmic. (We have no idea what "CHR" means but we know all about rhythm.)
The top AM station, which finished 9th overall, was all-talk KPRC-AM, which has the Rush Limbaugh franchise for the Houston-Galveston area, with a 3.4 share.