Radio in Mexico
Radio in Mexico is a mass medium with 98 percent national penetration and a wider diversity of owners and programming than on television.
That same night, the Gómez Fernández brothers mounted their first radio transmissions, also in Mexico City; their station, with 20 watts power, would operate until January 1922, with programs of one hour on Saturday and Sunday.
On May 8, 1923, the station "El Universal/La Casa del Radio" (later CYL) came to air in Mexico City with 50 watts of power.
[6] 1924 also saw the launch of radio stations by the Excélsior newspaper (CYX) and the Secretariat of Public Education (CZE, later XFX).
Known as the "Voice of Latin America", XEW marked the changing of a guard in Mexican radio development and the beginning of its consolidation as a viable business.
The original border blaster, John Brinkley's XER in Villa Acuña, Coahuila, was replaced with XERA in 1935.
In 1941, the foundation of Radio Programas de México, half-controlled by the Azcárraga family and Clemente Serna Martínez, marked the beginning of a networking frenzy in Mexico.
Within a decade, RPM had 92 affiliates, forming a network that at its height included more than half of the country's radio stations.
[6] In 1947, XERF-AM was founded in Villa Acuña,[10] which would begin a new generation of border blaster radio stations including XERB and XETRA in Tijuana, Baja California.
While the number of stations on the whole grew from 201 in 1951 to 332 in 1959, almost all on AM, the 1950s were a decade where Mexico began its forays into television and FM radio.
On the AM band, which still represented the vast majority of radio stations, listeners and advertisers, live programming was steadily supplanted by recorded music.
The networks began to install repetidoras (repeaters) of their programming; XEW, for instance, established such stations in San Luis Potosí, Monterrey, Veracruz, Oaxaca and Guadalajara, among other cities.
The law, which remained in effect with modifications for 54 years, also forced stations to get approval from the SCT to program in foreign languages.
[6] In 1967, Joaquín Vargas Gómez, who had visited the United States and was impressed with its FM stereo stations, worked to bring the system to Mexico.
Stereorey eventually became the cornerstone of a larger media empire, known as MVS Comunicaciones, which also included other radio stations and pay television systems.
[6] However, it came to air with subpar and antiquated equipment, a program schedule that included a break of several hours in the middle of the day, and a small staff.
It was not until the government of Luis Echeverría in 1972 that Radio Educación would receive new facilities, upgraded equipment and an expanded budget.
The government's acquisition of XEB-AM, XEMP-AM and XERPM-AM led to the creation of a group within the General Directorate of Radio, Television and Film (RTC) of SEGOB.
[6] "The Voice of the Mountains" was part of an initiative to promote educational and social development in indigenous regions of Mexico.
However, this was shot down by antitrust authorities, who expressed concern that the combination of ACIR and Televisa would squeeze smaller competitors out of the advertising market.
In the 1990s, Mexico experimented with digital audio broadcasting (DAB) technology; adoption of it, however, was never attempted as a group of radio station owners in northern Mexico, concerned about the United States' decision to not use DAB and worried that they would lose access to US audiences, lobbied the CIRT to not take action.
The reforms created a new and more autonomous broadcasting regulator, the Federal Telecommunications Institute, and also replaced the concession/permit system with a three-tiered classification of station concessions, consisting of commercial use, public use, and social use tiers.
The social use tier further includes subcategories for community and indigenous radio stations, for which the 106-108 MHz sub-band is reserved moving forward.
[23] By May 2018, nearly four years after the passage of the Ley Federal de Telecomunicaciones y Radiodifusión, the IFT had awarded concessions to 50 community and 7 indigenous stations.
Additionally, a frequency made available by the move to 400 kHz was awarded to be Mexico City's first community station, XHCDMX-FM "Violeta Radio".
Mid-size groups include NRM Comunicaciones, Grupo Imagen, and the government's Instituto Mexicano de la Radio.
Some analysts consider Mexico's radio markets to be oligarchical, with the vast majority of audiences and advertising revenue concentrated in few hands.
[18] Many commercial radio formats are national, with networks formed by owned-and-operated and affiliated stations; for instance, MVS Radio owns the Exa FM, La Mejor and FM Globo formats, carried by a mix of MVS Radio-owned stations and local affiliates in various cities.
During the 1999 UNAM strike, a pirate radio station called La Ke Huelga, still in operation, served as the launching pad for people that would later be involved in a variety of community radio stations, including XHCD-FM in Hermosillo and XHECA-FM in Amecameca, Estado de México.
Some community radio stations were established to serve remote areas, like XHHCC-FM; others broadcast in indigenous languages, as is the case for XHBAK-FM.
