Is it required for Mexican radio stations to broadcast their ID top and bottom of the hour and their power output? What I heard is XLTN and potentially 100,000 Watts. which is incorrect. Also, Sometimes they don’t announce their call letters and only announce their frequency and power. Is this okay? As for power I thought they broadcast 57,000 Watts instead of 100,000 Watts.
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Xhltn 104.5 toh-id
- Thread starter e-dawg
- Start date
It is customary in Mexico and Latin America to add vertical and horizontal power and do a sum.
For example, at the Emmis station in Buenos Aires, we would put "200,000 watts" in sales material as we were 100 kw horizontal and 100 kw vertical. As this was the normal practice, there was nothing deceitful or wrong.
Exactly. (XHLTN is grandfathered though, and it even maintained its above-class ERP with the transmitter site minor move authorized this year. It broadcasts with 57.295 kW which is above the 50 kW Class B maximum.)
I don't believe the Class A, B, C etc. rules we have in the U.S. apply to Mexico FM's. Several other Tijuana sticks have 100kw ERP or close to it.
Mexico has station classes! But they don't have the zone rules (I, I-A, II) that the US does.
Mexico has one set of station classes nationwide: C, C1, B, B1 (all identically defined to the US classes), AA (6 kW, like US Class A), A (3 kW, like the old US Class A), and D (50 watts at up to 45 m HAAT).
It's the lack of zone rules that allows Tijuana stations to run 100 kW, whereas a San Diego station can't.
Here's a youtube video of someone recording XHLTN top of the hour ID. As you can hear, they didn't mention the call letters of XHLTN (Equis Achay elay te ene) and their power output is misleading. All they said, "Para San Diego y Tijuana con 120,000 watts potencia" instead of 57,295 watts.
https://youtu.be/oQ-WzppeBG4
https://youtu.be/oQ-WzppeBG4
The Diaz stations didn't necessarily do the correct toh IDs
When I worked for (then co-owned) Z-90/XHITZ in 1989, the actual "legal" ID was run at about 4 or 4:30 AM, just before we did a two minute version of the Mexican National Anthem. It was all on one cart (remember those?) - it correctly said the call letters, XHITZ, and the power and the city of license, then the anthem. The rest of the day the ID was simply "Noventa punto tres, Baja California, Mexico." This was technically not correct. It only said the frequency and Baja California. That would be like saying "106.5 FM, California" here as the legal ID. When they switched to "Jammin' Z-90" and even now I think, the ID is just "Zeta Noventa, Baja California, Mexico." How are they able to get away with that?
We had three produced Top of the hour IDs. We rotated two of them most of the time - I still remember them - "Broadcasting from high atop Mount Success (? I never got that - it was Mt. San Antonio), 100,000 watts of music power - Z-90 FM, California's Rock and Roll Hits." One of them had a Z-90 rock jingle, the other one did not have a jingle. The third one we ONLY used going in to the Mexican National Hour on Sunday nights and any syndicated programming (I think we had a Sunday night show with MTV's J.J. Jackson - some album rock show) - it was the only one that (kinda) said the actual call letters in English - "Broadcasting from high atop Mount Success, we're California's X-H-T-Z" then the Z-90 FM rock jingle played with a fade out.
I always wondered how Victor and Company were able to circumvent the Mexican broadcast laws to only do the "legal" ID once a day in the middle of the night, and these short IDs the rest of the time? He had three stations, all in the same building back then and I know for sure that Radio Latina ran a correct legal ID every hour. I had become friends with the young lady who was the Sunday night jock on X(H)LTN and paralleled my 6-10 shift on Z-90 and I would even drive her home so her dad didn't have to come out to the station to get her before I made the arduous drive through the border back to the States. She was a really neat lady, very good on the air, and we became friends because we both had an hour to kill during La Hora Nacional. Their studio was so much more spacious than ours.
When I worked for (then co-owned) Z-90/XHITZ in 1989, the actual "legal" ID was run at about 4 or 4:30 AM, just before we did a two minute version of the Mexican National Anthem. It was all on one cart (remember those?) - it correctly said the call letters, XHITZ, and the power and the city of license, then the anthem. The rest of the day the ID was simply "Noventa punto tres, Baja California, Mexico." This was technically not correct. It only said the frequency and Baja California. That would be like saying "106.5 FM, California" here as the legal ID. When they switched to "Jammin' Z-90" and even now I think, the ID is just "Zeta Noventa, Baja California, Mexico." How are they able to get away with that?
We had three produced Top of the hour IDs. We rotated two of them most of the time - I still remember them - "Broadcasting from high atop Mount Success (? I never got that - it was Mt. San Antonio), 100,000 watts of music power - Z-90 FM, California's Rock and Roll Hits." One of them had a Z-90 rock jingle, the other one did not have a jingle. The third one we ONLY used going in to the Mexican National Hour on Sunday nights and any syndicated programming (I think we had a Sunday night show with MTV's J.J. Jackson - some album rock show) - it was the only one that (kinda) said the actual call letters in English - "Broadcasting from high atop Mount Success, we're California's X-H-T-Z" then the Z-90 FM rock jingle played with a fade out.
I always wondered how Victor and Company were able to circumvent the Mexican broadcast laws to only do the "legal" ID once a day in the middle of the night, and these short IDs the rest of the time? He had three stations, all in the same building back then and I know for sure that Radio Latina ran a correct legal ID every hour. I had become friends with the young lady who was the Sunday night jock on X(H)LTN and paralleled my 6-10 shift on Z-90 and I would even drive her home so her dad didn't have to come out to the station to get her before I made the arduous drive through the border back to the States. She was a really neat lady, very good on the air, and we became friends because we both had an hour to kill during La Hora Nacional. Their studio was so much more spacious than ours.
It is very common in Mexico and much of Latin America (although not unanimous) to add the horizontal and vertical power.
Raymie may wish to add his experience with power statements on the air in Mexico, as he is our expert on all things "X".
I'm guessing that the PD or consultant wanted something that sounded cooler than "Mt. San Antonio" and made up "Mt. Success". It looks like they cobbled together ideas from two top of the hours from leading stations at the time...Hot 97, New York "From the top-top-top-top-top of the Empire State Building" and Power 106, Los Angeles "72-thousand watts of music power". I remember someone else (or maybe several someones) running with "Broadcastling live from the tippity-top of the hip-hop nation".
As for the legalities of the Mexican legal ID, I'll leave that to Raymie.
Since Victor passed and the station was run by LMSD, I've heard the full "XHITZ, Baja California, Mexico" calls every hour on Z-90. However, they have sped them up in ProTools so much that it blows by in about a second and a half. Here's an aircheck that Scott Fybush captured: http://tophour.com/audio/San Diego CA/fm0903_2016-04_xhitz_sfybush.mp3
They've done the same thing at XHRM. They kept the same recording they've always used (if memory serves, it's the voice of the licenseholder's mother, wife, or other family member and it's in the contract that you have to play her voice giving the ID) but they did another ProTools squeeze. Here's the original: http://tophour.com/audio/San Diego CA/fm0925_2008-11_xhrm_gwollman.mp3 Here's the squeeze: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhfJ2UccW0s
I always wondered when Z-90 ran the Mexican National Hour because I never heard it on Sunday night when the other stations ran it when I lived there in the 90s.
John, I was there during the last half of 1989, before the switch from Rock 40 to Hip Hop-pish stuff. I think it aired at 10 PM some of the time and 9 PM when we switched to Standard Time (or vice versa - I don't remember). We had an old boom box radio with a single speaker (like a RadioShack tabletop special) and they wanted us to push the mic so it was in front of the radio, which was tuned to one of the other stations so it sounded really bad...then I just had to be quiet, or leave the studio, which is how I started hanging out with Berenice Fernandez in the Radio Latina studio. They had a direct feed on the board, so they didn't have to be quiet over there. One of the other Radio Latina jocks, I think his name was Marco and he ended up becoming a big deal in Mexican radio, would sometimes join us. Even with the language barrier we were all able to have good enough conversations, although I was the odd one out, knowing so little Spanish.
In later years, I too didn't hear the Mexican National Hour on Z-90 or 91X, or sometimes it was partially played. I don't know how they got out of THAT....maybe because the studios were in SD by then and they figured they could get away with it.
Ho-lee....
Well, I don't wanna get banned, but damn. That's worse than a disclaimer at the end of a car lease commercial, John.
What is interesting is that neither gives a legal ID. They give the state, but not the city.
It's like an ID that says "KFI, California, USA".
They've been looking the other way on this for years. Most of the English speaking TJ FMs don't like to say the word Tijuana.
My favorite PSAs on XHRM were the ones translated to English telling you to vote PRI.
And, for some reason, when they do they say "Tia Juana" (or "Aunt Joan" in English) instead of Tee-wana.
We were in San Diego in mid-January and I was listening to one of the south-of-the-border FMs, and they were running English-language political commercials for a municipal race in Tijuana pretty much every stopset.
I remember listening to Z-90 in the early 90s. Could pick it up loud and clear in Orange County. (Must have been around 1991 because I have a recording of the TOH ID and then they play Rhythm Syndicate "PASSION").
The would always identify as "Zeta noventa, Baja California, Mexico"
I wanted to know what the stations calls were and wondered why they never said them. This was before internet and everything. I was almost convinced that Mexican stations didn't need call letter or something.
The would always identify as "Zeta noventa, Baja California, Mexico"
I wanted to know what the stations calls were and wondered why they never said them. This was before internet and everything. I was almost convinced that Mexican stations didn't need call letter or something.
Sidebar: you reminded me of a call letter situation I was involved with. At the Emmis stations in Buenos Aires, Argentina, we were buying some piece of equipment that had to be sold only to licensed radio stations per the manufacturer's requirements. That meant we had to put in the call letters of the FM. Nobody at the station knew them. None of our documents showed them. We had to call the licensing agency there and ask. It took them several days, but finally they told us what the call letters (actually letters and numbers) were and we placed our order.
Further off topic sidebar: In many cases, calls are just for licensing. In Ecuador, I asked to call one of my stations HCSP, its (partial) call letters. I was told that call letters were not to be used for identification and we had to have a unique and reasonable station name.
So as I've mentioned before... Since 2014 there have been no regulations governing station IDs for Mexican radio stations. This was even raised by the IFT advisory board in a 2017 recommendation. The station ID rules were in the Ley Federal de Radio y Televisión, which was abrogated and replaced with a law that lacked them. (The LFRTV required IDs every 30 minutes in Spanish)
Yes, inflated powers are common. MVS Mexico City loves to claim 180 kW when the stations are a bit under 100. Mexico had exactly one station over 100 historically...XHFO Mexico City at 146 kW. It was made to cut down... I heard one story that the nearest cochannel stations complained but I never could verify.
I am sure it would surprise the LMSD folk to learn they could ID in English, or not at all, and it'd be perfectly legal right now.
Yes, inflated powers are common. MVS Mexico City loves to claim 180 kW when the stations are a bit under 100. Mexico had exactly one station over 100 historically...XHFO Mexico City at 146 kW. It was made to cut down... I heard one story that the nearest cochannel stations complained but I never could verify.
I am sure it would surprise the LMSD folk to learn they could ID in English, or not at all, and it'd be perfectly legal right now.
They might be surprised, but I am not.
When I owned stations in Ecuador, there was no ID requirement at all. Station names, registered with the Ministry of Communications, had to be used "regularly in the course of programming".
Since I was trained at Grupo Radio Centro, I knew to give the name ahead of every song, ahead of every break and after it, too. So I had no trouble conforming with the rule in Ecuador.
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