New, locally owned radio station launched to target growing population…

By Mary Cashiola – Managing Editor, Memphis Business Journal
Oct 10, 2018, 3:49pm EDT

BIZ JOURNAL Media & Marketing

When Ivette Butron Ramos came to the United States to visit her mother almost 20 years ago, she thought she’d return to Mexico within a couple of weeks.

But, her visit to Memphis quickly turned into more of a working vacation.

“I did journalism in Mexico City,” Ramos said. “I arrived here one Saturday. The next day I was working in radio. … They gave me the opportunity because I was young, and they didn’t have a female voice at the time.”

For 24 years, Radio Ambiente 1030 AM has been the only Spanish radio station in Memphis.

As the owners of Butron Media Corp., Ramos and her husband, Sergio Butron, now manage the station with an agreement to one day buy it. But, they’ve also recently launched their own, brand-new station — La Jefa 99.3 FM and 1180 AM — to play regional Mexican music. The station — 99.3 FM — previously operated as Guess FM, a classic hits format.

The couple initially worked for Radio Ambiente for several years before leaving Memphis in the mid-2000s to work at stations in Orlando, Nashville and Little Rock.

But, when they ran into their former boss and the owner of Radio Ambiente, Carmen Reyes, at a St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital event, she convinced them to return to Memphis and eventually buy Radio Ambiente from her.

“One day, we received a call to the [Radio Ambiente] office for an opportunity to buy another station,” Ramos said. “We thought, this is a huge opportunity.”

Reyes wasn’t interested, but the Butrons were.

“This is the first time in the Mid-South that a Latino, or Mexicans, in this case, have the opportunity to have a signal owned and everything for us,” Ramos said.

After a year and a half, the FCC approved their license and purchase of the signal, making it the first FM signal in Memphis entirely owned and operated by Hispanics; it’s the second in the state of Tennessee. Radio Ambiente’s signal is rented from Flinn Broadcasting Corp.

“It’s so difficult to get approval for a signal because we are immigrants,” Ramos said. “But I said, ‘Why not?’”

Radio Ambiente is now a Spanish hot adult contemporary station; La Jefa’s is regional Mexican music, with a target audience are 18- to 35-year-olds.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 6.8 percent of Memphis’ population was Hispanic or Latino, as of July 2017 — a slight climb from the 6.5 percent recorded in the 2010 census.