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Say adios to La Preciosa, the Clear Channel-owned Spanish-language station currently sitting at 97.1 on your FM dial. At midnight tonight, it's going ... all-Christmas music, all the time, till at least the end of, like, Christmas. At that point, Clear Channel's Dallas market manager J.D. Freeman says this morning, it'll change formats again -- to what, he ain't saying, only that it'll be "a general-market format." Which means it's reverting back to its native tongue, English, as it was once the home of hard-rockin' KEGL-FM.
Freeman tells Unfair Park that when La Preciosa went on the air two years ago, it had a sizable draw -- "it was No. 1 with adults 18-49 in the winter of 2006," he says. But by this summer's rating book, it had slipped all the way to No. 16 in the market, which Freeman blames on Univision introducing a Spanish-oldies station in the market, Recuerdo, at 94.1-FM. And, frankly, Clear Channel just wasn't good at selling a Spanish-language station: "Candidly, we are a general-market broadcaster with the other four stations [KZPS, KDGE, KHKS and KDMX] we own in the market, and it makes more business sense to put on another general-market station." So, it's all-English, post-navidad. --Robert Wilonsky
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