Hispanic coalition vs. L.A.'s commercial TV stations: it claims outlets are discriminating in hiring practices.

Esther Renteria and her National Hispanic Media Coalition are becoming increasingly powerful watchdogs over local commercial television stations. The coalition has challenged two stations' Federal Communications Commission license renewals and plans a possible audience boycott in the Latino community that could hurt viewership and ultimately advertising revenues.

Claiming discriminatory hiring practices in two stations' newsrooms and executive suites, Renteria's nonprofit foundation has been able to delay the license renewals of two stations, KCAL-Channel 9 and KNBC-Channel 4. To step up the pressure, Renteria said, she is organizing a possible Latino viewership boycott during the upcoming May sweeps period to force stations to hire more Latinos throughout their organizations but especially in decision-making and on-air positions.

KTTV-Channel 11's Jose Rios is the lone Hispanic news director at the seven English-language commercial stations.

Renteria said job opportunities for Latinos at Los Angeles' newspapers are even worse, but these businesses are not licensed by the FCC and are not subject to federal hiring guidelines.

Renteria's group has been joined by the Urban League and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in pressuring the stations to add more minority reporters and anchors and in prodding government agencies to pressure the stations to act. Their complaints have spurred an investigation by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights into the hiring practices of the seven commercial stations operating here.

This commission has no regulatory authority but is considering looking into why the FCC has not been more forceful in monitoring hiring practices here, according to Philip Montez, the commission's western regional director.

Renteria said she met FCC Chairman Reed Hundt in Washington March 18 and asked him to enforce the FCC's hiring guidelines in the L.A. market.

The FCC has set a 50 percent minority hiring standard, requiring that stations must hire half the percentage of a particular ethnic makeup in the overall workforce. In Los Angeles, 36 percent of the workforce is Latino and therefore 18 percent of a TV station's workforce should be Latino to comply with FCC guidelines, Renteria said.

Walt Disney Co.-owned KCAL has not been within the FCC guidelines for 10 years, according to Renteria's group. That station's five-year FCC license ran out last November and has yet to be renewed. Randy Reiss, an executive vice president at Disney and the executive with overall responsibility for the station said, "We have filed our response with the FCC and it stands for itself."

Reiss said all challenges to his station's license renewal are taken seriously but anyone can file a complaint and he doesn't consider the coalition's challenge as "holding up" the stations renewal.

KNBC-Channel 4's license renewal is also being challenged by the group and that station has been operating since December without a new five-year license, Renteria said.

Her group has turned up the heat on Channel 4 where several Latino reporters, including David Garcia and Carla Aragon, quit with complaints about unfair treatment. This flap may have been the reason station President and General Manager Reed Manville abruptly left earlier this month. John Rohrbeck, president of NBC Television Stations, said the departure was not connected to the discrimination issue but he told the L.A. Times there is a perceived problem in the newsroom where morale is low.

KCBS-Channel 2 has become the eye of the ethnic minority hiring storm since several new, white, on-air reporters and anchors were hired. Contracts of the station's two top minority anchors, Hosea Sanders and Chris Conagla, were not renewed.

Renteria alleged, "KCBS gets a new GM (William Applegate) and all of a sudden there is a bunch of new people on camera with blond hair and blue eyes. They all look like Ken dolls but this not a Ken and Barbie town. This is an area of great ethnic diversity."

Applegate did not return phone calls.

A white former NBC national news correspondent now living in Los Angeles said L.A. stations have hired minorities as window dressing. They have not complied with FCC regulations because that agency's powers were curbed during the Reagan-Bush era and it lost much of its clout, the 25-year veteran said.

Renteria said she left her meeting with Hundt feeling that the FCC considers the ethnic hiring issue important and will look to boost enforcement procedures. However, plans for a boycott are in the works and a decision on that will be made later this week.

"If we (Latinos) decide to pull the plug and not watch these stations it could effect them," she said. "We are 42 percent of the population and nobody can win a ratings race without us. It's simple math. There is an excellent possibility it (the boycott) will happen."

Local media watchers in the Anglo and Hispanic communities say that the current flap over television hiring is an outgrowth of the 1992 L.A. riot. Latinos are concerned that their community is being misrepresented on the nightly news.

"Most of the images we see are of gangs or illegals. The truck that crashed with illegals recently is typical of this coverage," said Octavio Nuiry, president of the Hispanic Public Relations Society. Nuiry added that KABC's (Channel 7) new show "Vista L.A.," anchored by Laura Diaz and Henry Alfaro, has been a positive step in providing balanced coverage of the Latino community.