Abogados de Inmigracion

That means lots of English-language rap and R&B from 50 Cent and The Game peppered with Latin rap, Latin pop and reggaeton, the Puerto Rican hip-hop offshoot popularized by the likes of current chart-topper Daddy Yankee, Pitbull and Tego Calderon.

"People have been trying to make something like this happen, depending on how you count, for a couple of years or on and off for the last 20 years," says Sean Ross, vice president of music and programming at Edison Media Research, a firm that helps radio stations with listener research. "Houston has had radio stations that mixed Latin and pop, Spanish and English. There was a Spanish-language station, KXYZ, which would mix Menudo and Loverboy. There were Tejano stations of 10 years ago that mixed Spanish and English."

What has changed now are the numbers. There are now nearly 40 million Hispanics in the United States, and a recently released study, "Latino Intelligence," conducted by the market-research firm Youth Intelligence, found that 48 percent of 14- to 24-year-old Latinos identify themselves as bilingual but don't even bother with Spanish-language media and list their favorite music as hip-hop.

"I don't know that it necessarily is as much of a turnoff as it just doesn't resonate," says Edison Media Research's Sean Ross. "But, obviously, there's a reason why Clear Channel and Entravision are doing this version of the format and not just doing what [traditional urban station] The Beat is doing. There's now enough of a Latino audience and enough money for Hispanic radio that, even if what you have is primarily Latino [listenership], you can still make a pretty good living."

Helping the trend along is the spike in popularity for reggaeton, which, like Jamaican dance hall before it, lends hip-hop a Caribbean twist that can be heard on dance floors from South Florida to San Francisco.

WVOZ-FM, a San Juan, Puerto Rico, station, is often credited with kick-starting the hurban trend when it nabbed big ratings a couple of years ago with its rap-reggaeton hybrid. Reggaeton "was an underground movement," says Nestor Rocha, Entravision's programming vice president. "It's now becoming part of the mainstream. This is the perfect moment."

But one man's perfect moment is another's perfect nightmare. Loyal rock fans, many of them Latino, in Miami and Houston were not happy to find their stations transformed. They complained to local media and Clear Channel, but it wasn't enough to get their stations back.

So far, ratings appear to be on hurban's side with KLOL surging from 17th to eighth in the Houston market between fall and winter, according to Arbitron. Although it's too soon in Fort Worth-Dallas to tell how KZZA is doing (it hasn't been around for a full ratings quarter), initial Arbitron projections show it moving from 27th at the beginning of winter to 22nd now.

Still, even with good numbers, it remains to be seen if this is phenomenon or folly. The format is only in a few cities, and programmers at more traditional urban, R&B and rhythmic Top 40 stations in South Florida, for example, are not impressed. "It may be brilliant. It may bust," Jerry Rushin, general manager at WEDR-FM and WHQT-FM told The Miami Herald.

WPOW-FM program director Kid Curry was feeling less charitable. "It's all hyperbole. Bring 'em on," he told the paper.