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When Mitch Gelman drove his two foster daughters home from camp in summer 2023, they wanted to play Karol G and Shakira in the car. He flipped through the radio dial and, to his surprise, found nothing Latine. He wanted to fix that. So, he sought out Tere Paniagua, the executive director at the Office of Cultural Engagement for the Hispanic Community.

“I said to (Paniagua), ‘Where is the Spanish radio station in Syracuse?’ And she said, ‘We don’t have one,’” Gelman said. “I said, ‘Do you want one?’”

Gelman is the CEO and president of WCNY, central New York’s PBS affiliate radio station. He and Paniagua co-chaired a team of community members to create Pulso Central, CNY’s first Spanish-language radio station. They began working on the station in 2023, and the first show aired on Sept. 15.

Before getting the station on air, Gelman wanted to conduct research. His team at WCNY and a group of marketing students at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management made a market research survey to evaluate the public’s need for a Spanish radio station.

The results were overwhelming, with 98% of the responses suggesting they would listen to and support a Spanish-language station. The team also found the Hispanic community in Syracuse had grown 30% from 2010 to 2020, making it the fastest growing community in the region, according to U.S. census data.

Gelman took a backseat role and deferred to other community members in the planning process, mainly providing the spectrum and technology to put Hispanic-oriented content on the air.

Liam Kennedy | Staff Photographer

A Pulso Central flyer sits on a table in the recording booth at WCNY on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. Pulso Central is central New York’s first Spanish-language radio initiative featuring music as well as local and national shows.

WCNY worked with SU Professor Maria Emma Ticio Quesada, who teaches Spanish 439: Community Outreach. Jade Aulestia, an SU senior, and Nicolas Greiner-Guzman, a junior studying broadcast and digital journalism, became involved with Pulso Central through the course.

The students pre-recorded around 40 minutes of content for Pulso Central, consisting of trivia and music segments. Greiner-Guzman said he had prior broadcast experience through Citrus TV’s “Noticias,” a Spanish-language news show, but was given heightened responsibilities and creative freedom at Pulso Central.

“They were super open with giving us the reins,” Greiner-Guzman said. “Because it is a new radio center, whatever ideas you come up with, you feel free to share.”

Working with Pulso Central offered the students professional experience and broadened their understanding of how language impacts reporting. Aulestia said mistranslation of news media often contributes to misinformation, but a benefit of Pulso Central is that it meets listeners in their native language.

Because the Spanish language is spoken in different regions, with different pronunciations and accents, broadcasting can be a daunting task. Quesada worked around this by getting programming from Radio Bilingue, which broadcasts from the Los Angeles, California, area to cater to speakers from Mexico in Syracuse, while also accommodating many Caribbean Spanish-speaking broadcasts.

Paniagua said most local outlets don’t cover relatable stories for Latine communities in upstate New York, and tell stories only when bad things happen in the community, rather than inspiring ones.

“It changes the whole media landscape, in terms of how information flows, what kind of information flows, what stories flow,” Paniagua said. “At the center of everything is, ‘How are we presenting information to the public?’”

After the station’s first show launched, Paniagua said she received an outpouring of messages from members of the task force and community. The team was excited about the potential Pulso Central has to reach the growing Latine community in CNY.

Pulso Central has a personal importance to Gelman and his soon-to-be adopted daughters. He said without them, he wouldn’t have known about the lack of Spanish language content on the radio.

“When they come home in January or February, I will have made good on my promise,” Gelman said. “They will have a Spanish language station in Syracuse.”

Disclaimer: Nicolas Greiner-Guzman took photos for the Daily Orange in 2022. He did not affect the editorial content of this story.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated Tere Paniagua’s position at Syracuse University and incorrectly referenced Mexican and Caribbean Spanish as dialects. The Daily Orange regrets these errors.

Published on October 8, 2024 at 12:39 am