The Pulse
Coyotec’s Los Angeles Audience Jumps 84.9% Among 18-to-34s
Entravision’s AI co-host Coyotec shares weekday airtime with broadcaster GeeGee Guzman on Los Angeles station José 97.5 FM. Nielsen figures cited by WIRED show the station’s audience of 18-to-34-year-olds rose 84.9% from August to September
AI.info Team · Written with AI · fact-checked ·
Listeners aged 18 to 34 at Los Angeles station José 97.5 FM rose 84.9% from August to September 2026, according to Nielsen figures Entravision shared with WIRED. The station’s cumulative Hispanic listenership rose 21.6% over the same month. The figures coincide with the rise of Coyotec, Entravision’s bilingual AI personality, but they do not isolate its effect from co-host GeeGee Guzman, the show’s move into weekday mornings or other programming changes.
From a weekend slot to weekday mornings
Coyotec debuted as a solo weekend host in September 2025. It now co-hosts Al Aire y Sin Permiso with Guzman, and the program airs on weekdays from 8 to 10 a.m., replacing a syndicated show. Entravision’s June announcement said the Los Angeles program had already expanded by two hours in April.
By August, the pairing had also reached five additional markets: Sacramento, Las Vegas, Modesto and Palm Springs in California, and McAllen, Texas. Entravision’s announcement of the expansion described an English-infused format for bilingual listeners. The McAllen broadcast runs one hour; the four other markets carry a two-hour show.
Entravision’s figures show a sharp month-to-month increase in Los Angeles, including a 500% rise among Hispanic women aged 18 to 34. The company’s data, as reported by WIRED, do not provide the underlying audience counts for that group. Nor does a one-month comparison establish that Coyotec alone caused the gains.
Guzman shaped how Coyotec speaks
Guzman joined Entravision in January 2026 and helped adjust Coyotec’s voice and Spanish pronunciation. She told WIRED that the AI initially sounded too poetic and that she wanted it to sound more like everyday family conversation. Her parents helped as conversational partners while she refined its pronunciation.
“It's technology at the end of the day, so it's not going to be perfect... But nonetheless, the listeners, they like him,” Guzman told WIRED. Coyotec can answer Guzman in real time, but it cannot take calls or respond directly to listeners on air. That leaves the human host as the link between the synthetic personality and the audience.
Entravision executive vice president of AI strategy LeaAnna Hernandez told WIRED that Coyotec uses Claude Haiku for live response generation and ElevenLabs for its voice; OpenAI and ChatGPT helped with early scripts, and Midjourney helped storyboard the character. The tools help make the voice and persona, but the program’s exchanges still depend on a human co-host.
Audience growth comes with a workplace dispute
The format’s growth has arrived alongside questions about how broadcasters use AI at work. Becca Guzmán, a broadcaster and voice-over artist who had done radio imaging for Entravision, said the company stopped working with her and alleged that an employee told her AI tools were replacing her work. Her account is an allegation, not an established finding.
Entravision executive vice president of sales, brand and partnership marketing Karina Cerda told WIRED that the company had no record of Becca Guzmán being laid off and had not let staff go because of AI. Cerda said Entravision had hired more people and suggested the company may no longer have needed the contractor’s help after changing its workflow software.
Eduardo Maytorena, Entravision’s president of audio, framed the test less as a question of technology than of audience response. “Technology can create the character, but the audience decides if that character matters,” he told WIRED. For now, the clearest evidence is the station’s reported audience growth; whether it holds as the show reaches more markets—and what that expansion means for radio workers—remains unsettled.