Best TV News Anchor on the Radio

Since the mid-1970s Benitez has been the sober, soothing Spanish voice of South Florida news on WLTV-TV (Channel 23), but we like him better as a standup comic whose shtick is broadcast on the radio. The local affiliate of Colombian media giant Caracol already boasts the most rollicking drive-time show in this market in any language. Each weekday from 4 to 7 p.m., "Regreso a Casa" (The Return Home) bubbles with the exuberant puns and parodies of talk-jocks Alfonso Quintero, Paula Arcila, and Saulo Garcia, as well as the dulcet tones and improvised rhymes of Eduardo Vasquez and Gabriel Cuartas, better known as Los Trovadores. But this show really gets cooking at about 5:45, when the motorcycle sound effect heralds Benitez's arrival live from the Channel 23 studios. (Benitez is a Harley-Davidson nut, famous for tooling around town on his Hog.) After exchanging pleasantries, he adds his basso profundo to the segment called "El Chiste de la Tarde" (The Afternoon Joke), as the group engages in the hallowed Colombian tradition of sitting around telling guy-walks-into-a-bar jokes. Benitez more than holds his own with the hosts, with such winners as: "Manola arrives at the airport counter with this enormous TV. They say to her, Manola, don't they have TVs in Galicia?' Yeah, but the thing is, I prefer the shows from here.'" Rimshot, please! Many of the jokes involve untranslatable puns, especially off-color ones. (Suffice to say that arepa has one meaning when applied to a tasty corn patty and quite another when referring to a woman's anatomy.) Whether or not the jokes make the audience laugh, the fact that every one elicits cacophonous guffaws from the assembled joke-tellers can't help but amuse listeners, even those with an imperfect grasp of Spanish. When Benitez gives a rundown of that night's news at 6 p.m., the hilarity settles down just a bit -- hasta mañana.