Program areas at Radio Bilingue
News & Information Programming:Radio Bilinges (RB) award-winning team of reporters, producers, editors and hosts is responsible for developing and producing original content that is carried by some 100 public radio stations in the U.S. and Mexico. At the heart of RB programming is a slate of national and local news and information programs that fill the gap in coverage of Latino issues in commercial and public media. Lnea Abierta, produced by RB since 1995, is the first and only live national Latino-oriented talk show in Spanish in the U.S. public broadcasting system, featuring rousing conversations with national newsmakers in politics, arts, culture, and more; the show also features regular audience call-in participation. Comunidad Alerta is a live interactive current affairs program in Spanish airing Tuesdays through Thursday mornings, with a focus on the most pressing community concerns, such as immigration rights, health care and more. And weekends feature Edicin Semanaria de Noticiero Latino, the only national Spanish language news feature magazine in public broadcasting, featuring reports from journalists throughout the U.S. and Mexico.Integral to RB is programming that lifts up the voices of the communities it serves. Weekend shows such as La Hora Mixteca and La Hora Triqui are hosted by volunteer farmworkers from indigenous Mexican communities. Speaking in their native Mixteco, Zapotec and Triqui languages, these hosts connect with their communities over the airwaves to inform them about issues of concern and to celebrate their shared music, history and traditions and culture. Other RB music/talk shows such as Rockins da House and Alza Tu Voz lift the voices of Latino youth by giving them airtime to discuss issues such as school participation, leadership, violence prevention, teen pregnancy prevention, civic activism and more. Emergency Responsiveness:Since its inception Radio Bilinge has provided emergency prevention, response and recovery programming for listeners in their languages regarding disasters in the communities we serve. This includes fires, earthquakes, heat events, freezes, and flood disasters, as well as racially motivated mass shootings targeting Latinos such as in El Paso and Uvalde, Texas. As these threats grow, Radio Bilinge is increasing its information and reporting to our severely affected Latino communities.Arts & Cultural Programming:RB provides opportunities for community members to experience and enjoy Latino music and culture in a positive and community-oriented non-commercial format. RB shows such as Onda Tejana, Ritmos del Pueblo, and Arriba el Norte focus on traditional music genres such as mariachi, jarocho, trio, Tejano, conjunto, Norteo, banda, Chilenas, salsa and other musical genres. Other shows showcase jazz, Caribbean, AlterLatin, rock en Espaol, ska, reggae and more. RBs interview programs also feature prominent and emerging Latinos artists, cultural events, and the roots of Latino arts and music. Community Engagement:RB is committed to building a healthier, more vibrant future for the Latino communities that are most vulnerable to challenges such as health disparities, climate change, poverty, and other systemic inequities. To that end, the network leverages its longstanding expertise in reporting and creative educational content to inform and engage listeners on a wide range of issues, including health, education, economic opportunity, the environment, emergency preparedness, immigration policy, and more. Complementing this are targeted broadcasting campaigns that empower working-class Latinos by providing information and resources and opportunities to take action. Recent RB campaigns with news coverage, interviews with trusted community partners, community call-in Q&As, and educational messaging have centered on Covid-19 prevention and assistance, health (such as breast cancer awareness, health equity, hospice care), environmental issues (climate change, emergency preparedness), domestic violence, immigration and workers rights, education, Census participation, and more. RB also collaborates with scores of nonpartisan nonprofits that promote voters' registration and participation at the local, state, and national levels. At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic that disproportionately affected the Latino community, RB quickly responded to listeners urgent need for more reliable information in their languages and expanded existing programming time on a daily basis to deliver frequent updates, address misinformation, and accommodate the increase in listener call-ins. And, at a time when some proposals sought to chill or exclude immigrants from the 2020 Census, RB worked with hundreds of nonprofit partners throughout the U.S. to educate and encourage all Latino households to participate. The result was the record participation in the census of those considered hard-to-reach in every California community that Radio Bilinge serves. When the nonprofits doing on-the-ground census outreach could no longer knock on doors because of the pandemic, many turned to Radio Bilinge, as a trusted messenger for over four decades, to deliver the message. Reach: RB reaches its target audience through its expansive broadcast network of owned stations throughout California and other states and parts of Mexico. RB-owned full-power FM stations in California include KSJV 91.5 FM (Fresno), KMPO 88.7 FM (Modesto-Stockton), KTQX 90.1 FM (Bakersfield), KHDC 90.9 FM (Salinas), KUBO 88.7 FM (El Centro), and KVUH 88.5 FM (Mendocino). Augmenting these California full-power FM stations are several RB repeaters serving Coachella, Paso Robles, Palmdale/Lancaster, Santa Maria, Barstow, Hollister, San Luis Obispo, and Tracy. The RB network of owned stations also includes full-power FMs in southern Colorado (Alamosa) and along the Mexican border in the states of Arizona (Douglas), New Mexico (Chama, Raton, Silver City) and south Texas (Crystal City, Zapata, Rio Grande City, Presidio). Seventy-five affiliate stations in many other U.S. states carry specific news and cultural programming.RB is a transnational service by virtue of its own stations but also through our broadcast partnerships in Mexico. Our programming is broadcast live by Indigenous service radio stations in Oaxaca and in Baja California Norte that serve transnational farmworker indigenous families in their own languages.Over the decades, Radio Bilinge has done outreach to notify and support urban and rural Latino communities to establish their own public radio services, including full power FMs and low power FMs. For example, Radio Bilinge successfully saved frequencies for grassroots local Latino organizations in San Antonio, Denver, Chicago, Salem, OR, and Somerton, AZ on the Mexican border. In the past decade, Radio Bilinge supported the efforts of California Latino youth, arts and Indigenous Mexican organizations to realize their own local low-power services in Santa Ana, East Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, Oxnard, and Coachella. Radio Bilinge continues this work today supporting fellow non-profits as new low-power radio frequencies are arising. RB streams its programming live 24/7 at radiobilingue.org, where additional information about its Latino Public Radio Network programs and service may also be found. Thousands of hours of RBs legacy programs are now archived in the United States Library of Congress Archive of Public Broadcasting.