Cecil Heftel passes.
January 8, 2010
According to Radio Ink, Cecil Heftel, the pioneering founder of Heftel Broadcasting — which in 1999 became Hispanic Broadcasting Corp. — died of natural causes yesterday in San Diego.
Heftel Broadcasting owned stations including KIMN/Denver and KGMB-AM and KGMB-TV/Honolulu in the ’50s into the ’70s, pioneering Top 30 programming in pop radio. In 1976, Heftel was elected to the House of Representatives, representing Hawaii, and served until 1986, when he resigned to run for governor of Hawaii and lost.
When Heftel returned to the broadcast business, Heftel Broadcasting moved into the then-nascent Spanish-language market, where, AP notes, Heftel was “credited for being a radio-industry visionary for seeing an opportunity to serve the burgeoning Hispanic population in the United States.”
Hispanic Broadcasting Corp. merged with Univision in 2003.
An interesting footnote is that Cecil Heftel is also credited for paying the highest amount for any AM / FM radio properties regardless of language at the time when he purchased KTNQ-AM/KLVE-FM the top Spanish language station in Los Angeles or a reported $40 million, which were owned and operated by the Liberman brothers.
