Broadcasting from a room (later to become a proper studio) at the Olympia Cinema on 16 September Street in Mexico City, it initially was powered at only 5,000 watts.

Its future sister stations would take affiliation with rival networks, XEQ-AM with CBS and XEX-AM with the Mutual Broadcasting System.

[citation needed] In the United States, the call letters for KXEW, a commercial AM radio station in Tucson, Arizona, were a tribute to 900 XEW.

The call sign was chosen by its president and CEO, J. Carlos McCormick, because of his admiration of Azcarraga, whom he had met as a teenager during a 1950 visit to Mexico City.

[citation needed] The FM frequency, 96.9, received its concession on April 28, 1962; it was not launched until the 1970s, and by the end of that decade, it carried a disco format.

Thus XEW-FM became a news and talk outlet, albeit musical programming can still be heard on overnights and weekends when live sports broadcasts are not scheduled.