(February 8 - 8:09 a.m.) Cecil Heftel, the media executive, owner of KTNQ and KLVE, and former congressman from Hawaii died last Thursday. Heftel, 85, had been in failing health for some time and died of natural causes.

Earl McDaniel, former personality at KPOP, KDAY and KFWB, became President of Heftel Broadcasting for many years, in addition to being the general manager of KGMB radio (later called KSSK) in Hawaii. Earl called Heftel "one of the most incredible men and broadcasters I've met. There will never be another one like him."

Heftel purchased the two LA Spanish-speaking stations in the mid-1980s. “I recall that the two stations were for sale for right around $40 million,” recalled McDaniel. “I thought it was kind of funny because KTNQ was at 1020, which is where I got my notoriety when it was KPOP. What goes around comes around.

“On a trip to Los Angeles, I told Cec that I didn’t think the stations would ever be that cheap again,” Earl continued. “He was incredulous because it was a lot of money in those days. Heck, it’s a lot of money today. We talked about it for two or three days and then we made an offer. We got the financing and it went into escrow and we received an offer of a $4 million profit before it came out of escrow if we wanted to flip them. And we decided not to and just went from there.”

Earl brought in Ken Wolt, from the Heftel Cincinnati operation, to run the two newly acquired LA stations. Heftel kept them until he sold his entire Hispanic operation to Hispanic Radio, which eventually was sold to Univision.

“As a former program director I thought what the hell, I can’t understand this stuff but we had some very good people representing us and Ken Wolt was an excellent manager. The original studios were on Sunset Boulevard and not too professional. Ken decided to move the stations, he moved them to the old Broadway store at Hollywood & Vine, which was quite unusual for Hispanic stations to move up to new studios and use professional technology.”

Wolt embarked on a major outdoor campaign, which was unique for Hispanic radio at the time. “The problem at the time was Arbitron didn’t reflect the Spanish audience in any way. There was quite a battle with Arbitron to reflect correctly the total audience response including Hispanics. That finally came around a couple years later. When that occurred the real audience of KTNQ and KLVE became apparent and the advertising dollars came rolling in then. For a long time since they were Hispanic advertisers, the comparable rates were not the same as they were for more mainstream stations, but that too came around.”

Earl used a parallel with the early days of Top 40. “It was like when rock ‘n roll first came in, you’d never get an advertiser from an airline company or automobile company so it took a while to develop.

“By the time Cecil sold his Hispanic group, KTNQ and KLVE were fully accepted and doing extremely well,” concluded McDaniel.

Cecil Landau Heftel was born in Chicago on Sept. 30, 1924, and got his bachelor's degree at Arizona State University after serving in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946. He came to the Islands in 1964, after already establishing himself as an owner of broadcast stations on the Mainland, and quickly became a force to reckon with in Hawai'i television and radio.