Media firm grows with the Latino market

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- You might not expect to hear Walter Ulloa discussing the Sex Pistols.

Yet, he's also the person who has kept Steve Jones, guitarist for the Sex Pistols — perhaps the quintessential punk band — as the featured DJ with complete freedom over what to play or say at Entravision's 103.1 radio station in Los Angeles.

"I didn't know a lot about that format," admits Ulloa, 59, in a tidy suit and dark glasses.

But what he does know are gaps, those underserved pockets of the media market that present huge opportunities. By targeting the fast-growing but long-overlooked Latino market, Ulloa has grown Entravision into the No. 2 Spanish-language media company behind Univision. "You're looking for the hole," he says.

When Entravision took control of the relatively new Indie 103.1 in 2005, Ulloa was tempted to do what he knew and turn it into a Spanish-language station. That was until he learned that 103.1 was reaching an underserved segment of the Los Angeles market, fans of edgy alternative acts such as the Sex Pistols.

He decided to not only leave Indie's format in place, but devote additional resources to the station.

Indie 103.1 is still small: It was the 37th-most-listened-to Los Angeles station in the summer, says radio tracker Arbitron. Its average reach in the past four quarters, though, is up by a double-digit percentage in nearly every age group and time slot, according to Arbitron data compiled by Indie 103.1.

Ulloa was sticking to a strategy that has served him well and been a key to his company's success, says Marla Backer, analyst at Soleil Research Associates. Ulloa "has lots of opportunity to look for high growth, and that's where the focus is," he says.

Relishing the ignored and underappreciated portions of a population and offering them a product is a common theme running through Ulloa's life. His appreciation of the underappreciated goes beyond his career, and is evident in the decorations in the company's otherwise non-descript headquarters in an office park in Santa Monica.