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Regional Mexican format revived on 97.1 HD2

J

JohnVin2000

Good news for all Regional Mexican music fans around the NYC metro area! After nearly 5 years since the Regional Mexican music format departed from WQBU-FM (Que Buena 92.7) to become a Spanish AC station, the format has been REVIVED!

But the format is not available to everyone unless users with HD Radio, a new sub-channel was added about a week ago on WQHT-FM 97.1 (Hot 97). The new station is branded as "La Buena 97.1 HD2", playing Regional Mexican music (Tejano, Cumbia, Mariachi, Banda, etc.)

Here is a recent video of the person tuning in the brand new station via his portable HD Radio device.

 
It makes sense as Mediaco now owns the Estrella stations.

I wonder if they'll bother putting Don Cheto from KBUE there.
 
Before now, 97.1 WQHT was one of the few NYC FM stations with no HD subchannels.

That frequency is one of the oldest FM stations in Market #1. In January of 1940, NBC Radio put W2XWG on the air, later WNBC-FM and now 97.1 WQHT. I count it as NYC's fourth FM station.

The oldest is 91.5 WNYE, first broadcasting as a classroom instruction Apex station in 1938. WOR-FM (now WEPN-FM) and WQXR-FM went on the air in 1939. Then WNBC-FM in 1940 and WCBS-FM in 1941.
 
Gregg. said:
Before now, 97.1 WQHT was one of the few NYC FM stations with no HD subchannels.

That frequency is one of the oldest FM stations in Market #1. In January of 1940, NBC Radio put W2XWG on the air, later WNBC-FM and now 97.1 WQHT. I count it as NYC's fourth FM station.

The oldest is 91.5 WNYE, first broadcasting as a classroom instruction Apex station in 1938. WOR-FM (now WEPN-FM) and WQXR-FM went on the air in 1939. Then WNBC-FM in 1940 and WCBS-FM in 1941.
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WQHT has had HD subchannels in the past. What does its age have to do with the subject?
 
I suppose -- especially to older demos -- there being a "prestige" to broadcasting on an FM or AM signal. But in today's world, the audio/media reality of 2024, would the promoters reach their target with a well-promoted stream instead of wasting time and resources on a platform (HD Radio) that has basically failed in the marketplace?
 
I can't help thinking they're trying to beat SBS to the punch and are doing this just because they don't have to invest a lot in resources. Like I said, they're doing this mostly out of their established LA station.
 
Gregg. said:
The oldest is 91.5 WNYE, first broadcasting as a classroom instruction Apex station in 1938
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Fascinating stuff! If I remember correctly, there is still an Apex-band FM station broadcasting - WA2XMN on 42.8mHz. http://www.wa2xmn.ar88.net/

I have no idea if their license is still good or the last time they made a broadcast, but regardless, it would be so cool to hear a wide-band FM signal way down on 42mHz. The reason the FCC eventually wanted everyone to move to the current FM band is because you still had elements of skip propagation down in the apex band, and that apparently caused too much interference between different cities. In this day in age, with digital receivers etc, I can't imagine 42mHz would be that prone to interference. Not even sure what currently is on 42mHz anyway.

I've always wondered as a pure curiosity/what if, how would a wide-band FM transmission propagate on an HF freq? While not WFM, there was (or maybe still is) a c-quam AM stereo shortwave pirate X-FM that made some phenomenal sounding transmissions. Hearing AM stereo but fading in and out like a regular SW station is such a neat thing to hear.
 
radiodx10 said:
The reason the FCC eventually wanted everyone to move to the current FM band is because you still had elements of skip propagation down in the apex band, and that apparently caused too much interference between different cities. In this day in age, with digital receivers etc, I can't imagine 42mHz would be that prone to interference. Not even sure what currently is on 42mHz anyway.
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The real reason the band move was Sarnoff. He wanted top thwart Armstrong's experimental FM broadcasts and FM in general so that people would spend their money on a much more expensive television set.
 
DavidEduardo said:
The real reason the band move was Sarnoff. He wanted top thwart Armstrong's experimental FM broadcasts and FM in general so that people would spend their money on a much more expensive television set.
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In the end, though, it was for the best. Given what we now know about how often the 40 MHz band is disrupted by E-skip, it's hard to imagine FM would have thrived there in the long run. Station spacings would have needed to be in the hundreds of miles for co-channels, and there was only 6 MHz allocated for commercial use.

Going up the dial with 20 MHz was the right move, even if initially for the wrong reasons.
 
fybush said:
In the end, though, it was for the best. Given what we now know about how often the 40 MHz band is disrupted by E-skip, it's hard to imagine FM would have thrived there in the long run. Station spacings would have needed to be in the hundreds of miles for co-channels, and there was only 6 MHz allocated for commercial use.

Going up the dial with 20 MHz was the right move, even if initially for the wrong reasons.
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Excellent point. In this case, Sarnoff ended up, as the Spanish saying goes, "like the birds shooting at the shotguns". His plan to waylay the progress of FM... which really sounded a lot better than AM (mostly delivered to transmitters by phone lines) at the time.

One of the neat things of FM was the ability to use the stations as links to other stations. Much of New England was covered by FM using FM hops from station to station. In fact, about 25 years later I linked stations across Ecuador using FM transmitters on mountainsides that picked up one station and broadcast its local sister.

Sidebar: you did not want to drive to most of those sites a) in the rain and b) at night. Some were at over 13,000 feet AMSL. I am still scared of mountain roads as a result, and at one point a few years back was so paralyzed driving to Sedona, AZ, that I had to pull over and calm down for over an hour!

My Cleveland Institute courses did not teach me about that.
 
lanceventa said:
WQHT has had HD subchannels in the past. What does its age have to do with the subject?
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I thought since we were talking about an FM station that hasn't put in HD subchannels, it would be interesting to note that its original owner was a pioneer in radio. I didn't realize it had an HD subchannel at one time. But apparently turned it off for a while.
 
how good is the coverage on HD over let's say Manhattan with so many buildings? I'll be working a few weeks in NYC in Aug and looking forward to checking this out.
 
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