"LATV Live" has the look of a television show taken over by a band of Latino college kids with an unruly enthusiasm for music and esoteric tastes.
Instead of sharing their favorite music videos with their roommates, this kinetic crew of twentysomethings gets to play at being veejays in prime time on KJLA, a full-power station that reaches almost 3 million households in Southern California over the air (Channel 57), via satellite and on most area cable systems.
These veejays love the camera, you can tell. The women look sexy, the men act cool or try to. But they all look like people you might have met in L.A., the young, bilingual Latinos you see everywhere--except on television.
Yet there they are, rotating one-hour time slots as hosts of L.A.'s only locally produced music video broadcast. They work mostly in English, sometimes stumble over their Spanish and confess to being nervous about interviewing visiting celebrities. And rightfully so: Their fledgling show has drawn the top names in Latin pop and rock en espanol, from Juanes to Jaguares.
"It's a show that amazes me," says New York-based publicist Josh Norek, who represents such Latin alternative acts as Mexico's Julieta Venegas, who also appeared in person on "LATV." "They're really one of the only stations that regularly plays this music. For all of the acts I work with, 'LATV' is their only U.S. television appearance."
"LATV" is the moniker for a block of local programs produced at KJLA studios in West Los Angeles. But this is no piddling public access outlet; it's a 5-million-watt operation with annual revenues of almost $5 million, mostly from religious shows, infomercials and shopping programs. The live Latin talent takes over from 8 to 10 p.m. Mondays through Wednesdays, with a "best of" on Thursday.
Despite its cachet, the show still has the edgy spontaneity of something that seems vaguely underground. The set has the air of a downtown artists' loft, industrial brick and concrete turned trendy on the cheap. The hosts interview guests on modern, brightly colored couches, while the rambunctious audience, many of its members too young to drive themselves to the studios, sits on bleachers, cheering like students at a high school pep rally.
"With 'LATV,' the secret is the interaction: You have the audience, you have the veejays, and once in a while they mess up, so they're real people," says Marcela Cuenze, a Los Angeles publicist and longtime rock en espanol fan. "It doesn't seem Hollywood.... It's more like 'Wayne's World.'"
