Music man

Tucson’s Armando Zamora excels in changing No to Yes

BUSINESS   SNAPSHOT

KEVT-AM 1210 Radio Regional Mexican format AM Talk radio station serving the Tucson area. Location: 2919 E. Broadway, Ste. 230 Tucson, AZ 86301 (928) 445-2259

Born in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1963, Armando Zamora has lead a rich and ambitious life, one that has been driven by one passion: music.

 At the age of four, Armando’s family moved to the United States, the result of his mother’s second marriage to a Mexican-American living in Texas. Though the family had left Mexico behind, Armando never lost his love for the sounds of popular Mexican music from states like Sonora, Chihuahua and Sinaloa.

“Regional Mexican music was my love as a kid and then as I got older,” recalls Zamora.  “Living in Phoenix, I would always listen to KVVA, and I would always call them, too. I was working delivering produce, maybe I was 19 years old, and I would call up their program directors begging them for a chance. I just wanted to be D.J. I wanted to be on the radio, but they wouldn’t give me a chance. They kept telling me I didn’t have the right voice, and that my Spanish wasn’t good enough.”

After a year of constant prodding, Zamora was finally invited down to the station’s production studio, where he was given a microphone and told to practice. Soon he was devoting much of his free time to improving his on-air skills, taping himself talking to a non-existent audience during the studio’s off hours.

“After another year and half, maybe two years of practicing and hanging around, the station’s program director, Roberto San Martin, was talking to me one day,” says Zamora with a smile.  “He had a big date that night and wanted to borrow my car. He knew how much I wanted to be a D.J., and so he said to me, ‘If you loan me your car, maybe we can work something out.’”

Zamora was given the least desirable shift in the station: 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. on the weekends.  Though he continued on as one of KVVA’s D.J.s for six years, he never made it as a host during prime listening hours. Zamora left KVVA in 1994, a year after starting his own promotion agency. Having spent eight years hustling, desperate for a break, delivering produce while practicing his radio voice and networking among the local radio community, Armando Zamora was now in business for himself – the president of Zamora Promotions.

“What I do best, what I have always liked best, is music. I am a promoter.”

In the years that followed, Zamora and a series of partners joined together to buy a string of nightclubs and restaurants throughout the Phoenix area.  As a promoter, Zamora was a tireless, recruiting new bands from throughout the region and introducing them to packed audiences.

In 1997, Zamora’s professional life came full circle. Where he had once been a simple music fan, begging his local station for a chance to put his foot in the door, in that year he bought his own radio station. KCKY in Coolidge was of the same format as KVVA, spinning the same regional Mexican music that Zamora had loved since childhood.

Today, Armando Zamora lives in Tucson, the owner of yet one more radio station, KEVT 1210 AM. Over the years, his entrepreneurial skills have only sharpened, preparing him for ever more difficult challenges. As the owner of a independent radio station in a marketplace under almost total corporate media domination, Zamora is forced to work harder, to be more creative than his competitors in order to remain profitable.

And yet, in spite of it all, the man waves off any talk of his job being difficult.

“I just find where I have the advantage and I use that. My main advantage is consistency and customer service.  If a client needs something from a corporate station, it might be two weeks before all the forms are filled and cleared and they get what they need. If a client calls me and needs something, they get it the next day.  My competition might have more money, but I get results.”