Byline: SANDRA YIN

Blanca Franco, a 19-year-old Mexican living in Los Angeles, listens to the radio at least 10 hours a day. Whether she's just waking up, cleaning house or working at the local Los Tacos restaurant, she's tuned in - but almost always to broadcasts in Spanish. "It reminds me of my home country," she explains.

Franco is one of 12 million people who avidly listen to Spanish-language radio. These stations cater to Hispanics by playing regional music and by offering in-language programming that includes news from their home countries. Spanish-language radio, also referred to as Hispanic radio, is so popular, in fact, that the format shows up among the Top 5 ranked stations in all leading Hispanic metro markets, according to Arbitron. "If you want to connect with Hispanic consumers, you do it in the language and the media they prefer," says Aida Levitan, CEO of Publicis Sanchez & Levitan, a Miami-based marketing agency that targets the Hispanic community.

Indeed, Hispanic radio is growing in popularity. Although Spanish-language-format radio stations account for only 5.6 percent of all commercial stations in the U.S., their ranks are increasing at a far faster clip than the general market. In 2001, there were 603 such stations in the U.S., up 82 percent from 1992, compared with all commercial radio stations in the U.S., which grew by only 10 percent during that time, according to M Street Corp., a Littleton, N.H.-based publisher and data supplier for the broadcast industry. Spanish-language stations also capture a small but increasing portion of all U.S. radio listeners - 7.6 percent, up from 6.5 percent in 1999, reports Arbitron.

However, despite the rapid growth of the Hispanic population and the popularity of Hispanic radio, ad spending is not keeping pace. The share of Hispanics in the U.S. has almost doubled between 1980 and 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and Hispanic consumers represent 13 percent of the U.S. population today. Yet Hispanic radio received only 3.3 percent ($607 million) of the $18.4 billion ad dollars spent in 2001, according to Hispanic Business magazine and the Radio Advertising Bureau.

Why aren't big firms advertising on Hispanic radio? Patricia Suarez, president of Suarez/Frommer & Associates, Inc., a Pasadena, Calif.-based advertising and communications firm, says large companies don't advertise on Hispanic radio because they believe Hispanic consumers can't afford to buy their products.