Luis Jiménez (radio host)

Infobox actor


caption =
birthname = Luis Jimenez
birthdate = March 26th of 1970
birthplace = San Juan, Puerto Rico
occupation = Radio Host

Personal life

Luis Jimenez was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on March 26th, 1970.

Early career

Luis Jiménez started his radio career in his hometown of Caguas, Puerto Rico as a teenager, working as a part-time disc-jockey in various local radio stations. He later moved to Orlando, Florida, achieving some recognition there as a morning radio host after holding various odd jobs. He was referred to La Mega's management as a suitable candidate for hosting a Spanish-language radio show in New York City and moved there in 1993. He started to host the show called El vacilon de la mañana, on La Mega radio station 97.9. The program's first airing occurred on August 9, 1993.

Jiménez modeled his show after El Gufeo Matutino (The Morning Goof), a successful radio program in Puerto Rico that lasted twenty-two years in its various inceptions, and always had Moonshadow as its main producer and host. Luis Jiménez cohosted the show with long time friend Junior Hernandez. Hernandez suffered from asthma, and died of a heart attack. Fans streamed to the station to pay tribute to Hernandez the Thursday night after his death; the popular radio personality was only 34 years old. After Broussard's move to New York City in 1997, and after the death of Hernandez's in 1998, the program had a succession of co-hosts, with Moonshadow joining the show for good in 2000. Moonshadow can claim poetic justice about the fact that WZNT-FM, also known as Z-93, (Puerto Rico's main salsa radio station), which was the same radio station who fired him for being too controversial, now airs El Vacilón de la Mañana to Puerto Rico in direct Internet audio feed from La Mega every morning after a management change (SBS currently owns both stations). The first audio feed to Puerto Rico occurred on February 9, 2004. The program has since gone into syndication by ABC Networks in a few Latino markets within the United States; the first syndicated airing to Orlando, Florida and other Latino markets occurred on January 9, 2006.

While Moonshadow has gone on record in numerous times about modeling his original show after Howard Stern's (with a very strong dose of Puerto Rican cultural elements), Jiménez's numerous original contributions give the show a unique pan-Latino flavor (its largest audience appears to be the Dominican and Puerto Rican community in New York City). The result "out-Sterned" Stern's show, and El Vacilón's audienceship ratings surpassed Stern's for three years, until Stern's departure to satellite radio in 2005.

During the first two weeks of January 2007, new airings of this program were discontinued, and only pre-recorded programs were aired, coinciding with Luis Jiménez's departure from the program. He has signed a contract with the Univision Radio network, but is prevented by previous non-competitive agreements to air any new program in New York City during El Vacilón's alloted time slot until 2008.

Since February 21, 2007, Luis Jimenez started producing his own show "The Luis Jimenez Show" and it is being broadcasted in several cities in the US, such as Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, among others through different Univision Radio stations. It is expected to expand into more cities during this year as Univision Radio introduces the show to new markets, but it was not expected to make it into NYC until 2008 (due to legal issues). Only two of the members of the old "Vacilon de la Mañana" have followed Luis Jimenez to his new show. These are "Yun Yun" and "Sonny Flow", the latter one being "DJ Chucky" who just became part of "The Luis Jimenez Show" crew. Alma, who is Luis's producer, is also part of the new show in Univision Radio. Upon his departure from "El Vacilon de la Mañana" Luis Jimenez also took the morning show's website with him. For the entire year of 2007 the domain name "www.elvacilon.com" belonged to his producer Maria Alma and therefore SBS and WSKQ La Mega 97.9 FM were unable to use the website address for the show.

"The Luis Jimenez Show" made it to NYC early in 2008 and it has gained a lot of fans and popularity since then, becoming #1 in the market in August.

Career Highlights

* Host of the Vacilon de la Mañana show from 1993-2007
* Host of the Luis Jimenez Show from 2007-present
* Jimenez also produced several "live" comedy shows at Madison Square Garden
* Co-wrote, starred, and produced a 2006 film comedy based on the radio show "el vacilon the movie"
* Made strides on TV as the official voice of the Spanish language versions of HBO and The History Channel.

External links

* [http://www.luisjimenezradio.com Luis Jimenez Radio Official website]