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Show Sunday, February - Page Fl THE HERALD. Provo. Utah, 14, 1993 djffl Ufjjn 1 ccn v. W i ... ' i J i i v - -- mil i-.,, - Y Qv i in in. n iiinmiiiin mi in ) n n - n.n . wii AF rholo Dwarfed by the clock, Marvin Schneider adjusts the counter weights on the clock atop the old Met Life Building in New York. ap Photo Marvin Schneider oils a mechanism for the bell in the clock tower in New York's City Hall. For whom the hell foils: Clock master has time of his life By JULES LOH l I " ' . " y. ' ' , , AP Special Correspondent - NEW YORK Two time zones west of here, in Boulder. Colo., the government's Institute of Time and Technology keeps an atomic clock that tells time down to the nanosecond, a billionth of a second. The people in the lab out there also talk casually of a picosecond, V v tw. f i f if';, atrillionth. Somewhere along the march of timekeeping, from the path of the sun to the pulse of the atom, the art if not the science of hacking its the reached poetic zenith day up with the town clock. At least that is the view of clockwatchers like Marvin Schneider. New York revived a job, and title, just recently when the mayor named Schneider as the city's official clock master. 19th-centu- "'' i 1 1 i J 11 r ' ry 4 s K 1 It was high time. Schneider had been doing the job free for 12 years, ever since he ran out of patience gazing daily at the stopped clock in the old Met Life Building in lower Manhattan and went up and fixed it himself. '. All that time he's been tending the gears and chains, the muscle landand sinew, of that four-face- d mark. He checks it from below against his reliable old stemwinder watch: quartz movements and digital readouts speak only of accuracy, nothing of artistry. Gradually, Schneider has added five more venerable town clocks to his workload, one at the Old Sun Building, one at the Harlem Courthouse, two at the borough halls in Brooklyn and Staten Island and ane in the bell tower at City Hall in Manhattan. The latter is a special t , . f t ' - X ' f . - ill til j -- !,OJsvJN 'm ... J' J i 1 V. I I. 1: I ' '.' .; .., ' f ') ' sense in that had bells before they had .me in a historical lands. is Six, then. And the clock master haviim the time of his life. AP Photo in the old Met Life Building. Marvin Schneider, the first New York City clock master since the 10th century, oils the gears of the clock anda station is 'numero uno' in Los Angeles radio market By MICHAEL WHITE Associated Press Writer - Alfredo LOS ANGELES a footfor was looking Rodriguez hold in Lo.s Angeles' tough ra !io market when he decided to till the airwaves with banda, Mexico's brassy answer to country and western music. Five months later, Spanish-languag- e was the No. I in nation's the station largest radio English-languag- e its market, burying KLAX-F- competitors. The ntnuv wnniiiinct'd in lust month's Arbitron ratings, stunned many in a city best known for rock n' roll. "It was a big shocker. Nothing like this had ever happened before." said Gordon Mason, president of the Southern California Broadcasters Association. "It's pretty remarkable when g you realize this is a station, that people who don't speak Spanish can't understand what they're saying," Mason said. KLAX's success is the latest example of Spanish radio's growing nonularitv. Snanish stations in Mi Spanish-speakin- ami and San Antonio also have achieved top rankings, but none have moved up so fast. So fast, in fact, that English-languag- e powerhouse KLSX examined Arbitron logs to make sure some of the listeners polled by Arbitron didn't confuse the call letters. KLAX is at 97.9 on the FM dial and KLSX at 97. 1. KLSX, an oldies rock station d Howard that features the Stern in morning drive time, found a few errors, but not enough to top-rate- overall ratchange its said Jim general manager ine, ninth-plac- e Freeman. One of seven Spanish stations in the Los Angeles area. KLAX had a 0.5 market share according to Arbitron in September, after its call letters were changed from KSKQ and the formal was changed. In January, KLAX had a 5.3 market share, reflecting an audience of 804.000 at any given time. "I've been in business three years and I've not had the amount of calls that I've had in three weeks because of KLAX," said Alfredo Alonso. publisher of the Spanish-radi- o trade journal Radio Y Musi- - ca. Rodriguez credits the station's rise to bunda, a form of ranchera music with roots in the northern Mexico slate of Sinaloa. Traditionally popular among immigrants, banda also has become a hit with Mexican-America- n teen-age- rs in California. In picking the format. Rodriguez abandoned the demographi-ca- l studies, which lump Hispanics of all backgrounds into a single group. Instead, he and staff members visited bars, discos and restaurants to fim' 'ii" ,vh " ''v cin's predominant Hispanic group. Mexican-American- s, were listen- ing to. Banda. derived from Bavarian music brought to Mexico by German immigrants, relies heavily on a brass section that includes a tuba belching the base line. In recent years electric guitars, synthesizers and drums have been added, making banda more appealing to youth, Rodriguez said. "It's ranchera converted into a dance sound and the kids like that." Rodriguez said. |