XEWW is a high-powered Class A station, with its 77,000-watt daytime signal sometimes reaching as far as the middle of the San Joaquin Valley.
However, 77,000 watts was apparently selected as this power sends the equivalent of the station's former 50,000-watt daytime signal (from its original Tijuana site, since demolished) towards Los Angeles without also increasing its prohibited overlap with KIRN (670 AM) in Simi Valley and KSPN (710 AM) in Los Angeles (from its present Rosarito site).
At night it uses a five-tower array directional antenna, decreasing power to 50,000 watts to protect CBU Vancouver, British Columbia, and CKGM Montreal.
While AM 690 is programmed for the U.S. side of the border, the present Rosarito transmitter facility strongly favors service to Baja California, with a signal that extends further south than north, due to protections to avoid interference with Canadian stations on 690.
In the early 1950s, XEAC spawned a television station, which was initially assigned the call letters XEAC-TV but changed to XETV before signing on.
[5] In 1957, a new group known as California Broadcasters, Inc., with headquarters in the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood, was formed by Rivera to manage U.S. sales and programming rights to the station,[6] which changed its call letters that year from XEAC to XEAK.
McLendon, working with the concessionaire, had the transmitter moved closer to the beach at its present Rosarito site, improving its conductivity in Los Angeles.
On May 6, 1961, XEAK yielded to XETRA (always written XTRA in the United States press and only announced as such in Spanish during station IDs), known as "X-TRA News" and describing itself as "everywhere over Los Angeles".
During most of the 1970s, XETRA continued as a beautiful music station, competing for San Diego listeners with KJQY on the FM dial.
As the easy listening format began to decline in the late 1970s, on September 19, 1980, XETRA switched back to Top 40, once again billing itself as "the Mighty 690".
For a number of years, the station was the broadcast home of the San Diego Chargers National Football League team.
The station's best-known sportscaster on XETRA was Lee "Hacksaw" Hamilton, who hosted a nightly sports talk program from 1987 until 2005, and was also the play-by-play voice of the Chargers from 1987 to 1996.
Since Clear Channel managed several Mexican-licensed stations aimed at the San Diego market, this was counted against the company's ownership limit under this ruling.
Management interest of some of these outlets, including XETRA-FM, XHRM-FM, and XHITZ-FM, was spun off into Finest City Broadcasting, owned by a former Clear Channel executive.
On November 24, 2012, XEWW was used as an overflow station for an English-language broadcast of a USC Trojans football game against Notre Dame.
A factor in the allegations was Phoenix's ownership of H&H, as the company itself is partially owned by entities connected to the Government of China.
The station had been operating under a special temporary authority to originate from studios in the United States, pending a formal approval by the FCC.
On October 14, 2023, XEWW returned to Spanish-language talk as "La Voz del Pueblo" ("The Voice of the People"), leased by Primer Sistema de Noticias, the media company of former Baja California governor Jaime Bonilla Valdez.