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WOEX Hits 96.5
- Thread starter CatCall
- Start date
Magic 93.9 in Miami plays Spanish and English songs but the personalities speak Spanish:
radioinsight.com
WMIA Flips To Bilingual AC Magic 93.9
iHeartMedia has flipped Hot AC "93.9 MIA" WMIA-FM Miami Beach FL to "Magic 93.9" with a mix of Spanish and
radioinsight.com
Historical perspective: When I interned at Organización Radio Centro in Mexico City in 1963 (5 stations, all marble hallways and walls) one of the stations played Top 40 music... half the songs were in English and half in Spanish. I learned editing when we started doing "bilingües 7-90" which were half of a hit in English and half in Spanish.
A few years later, I had a rock FM in Ecuador that only played English rock but everything else in Spanish... later 1960's.
Before its current oldies format, KOAI-FM (under a different callsign) played both Spanish and English hits with the announcers between the songs talking in both languages.
The U.S. (and those in the know please correct me if I'm wrong on this) is different from most countries in the world in this regard. In most countries, the language spoken by radio announcers, regardless of the music they play, is determined by whatever government is in power and is usually the language spoken by the majority group in power. To have, say an all-English station in Mexico, for example (and there are still some there, most notably in those Mexican towns that border major U.S. cities such as El Paso and San Diego), you have to get a special dispensation from the government. Even Canada, the U.S. neighbor to the north, with some exceptions for Quebec and native American stations, requires that most of its radio stations, regardless of the music programmed, use English announcers.
The U.S. (and those in the know please correct me if I'm wrong on this) is different from most countries in the world in this regard. In most countries, the language spoken by radio announcers, regardless of the music they play, is determined by whatever government is in power and is usually the language spoken by the majority group in power. To have, say an all-English station in Mexico, for example (and there are still some there, most notably in those Mexican towns that border major U.S. cities such as El Paso and San Diego), you have to get a special dispensation from the government. Even Canada, the U.S. neighbor to the north, with some exceptions for Quebec and native American stations, requires that most of its radio stations, regardless of the music programmed, use English announcers.
iHeart has a translator in Kissimmee on 97.9 that had been running the national iHeart 'Retro' format which is the same format. I just checked it and it's still branded as Retro 97.9 but appears to be primarily Spanish language music now with only 1-2 English language songs an hour. The national 'Retro' on iHeart is still running what 97.9 had been
retro979.iheart.com
Find the most recently played songs on Retro 97.9
Find the most recently played songs on Retro 97.9, Tus Favoritas De Siempre En Orlando
I don't believe Mexico requires special permission to air English-language programming, though the legal ID's (which run twice-an-hour) seem to always be done in Spanish. I seem to remember all Mexican stations have to air La Hora Nacional and carry all speeches from the President. With the latter, they had the option of carrying an English translation. Not sure about the National Hour. David likely knows more about all that than I do, though.
If I remember correctly, language is specified on the individual station licenses in Canada, and licensees have to get permission to change it. This information might be a little outdated, but, at least at one time, Canadian operators had to prove a market demand if they wanted to make significant changes to the programming and/or the language. As English and French are the official languages of Canada, every market of size has, or at least used to have, at least one radio station in each language, though Montreal and Ottawa were about the only ones that had a fairly even mix of stations in both. In most others, the only station in a language other than the dominant one in the market was run by the CBC.
When I listened to 91X, La Hora Nacional was always in Spanish.
The CRTC had a big problem with Marc Denis effortlessly flipping back and forth between English and French on various Ottawa and Montreal stations, and eventually ruled that there would be no more of that. Details and several airchecks here: The Marc Denis Collection – Reel Radio
I still miss WHTQ, when it was AOR, prior to the flip to burnt to a crisp Classic Rock
The Spanish/English AC stations originally followed the playbook from WMIA-FM Miami after it quickly became a top 5 station. It played mostly older hits for a more mature audience, similar to WFEZ which also has a large Hispanic female following. Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Elton John.
But in the last few weeks, WEPN-FM NYC has moved the era of music to a more contemporary sound. Apparently WOEX is going in that direction too.
BTW, I see from the Orlando ratings that WOEX got a slight boost after going All-Christmas, using mostly English holiday songs. But it hardly put a dent into WMGF, which had truly crazy numbers for the Holiday ratings period. Did any other station go above a 20 rating?
One other did. Lance posts the Top 50 stations by share and cume each month on his site.
Holiday 2025 (12/11 – 1/7) Nielsen Audio PPM Ratings Top 50
Average Quarter Hour Share for Persons 6+, Mon-Sun 6AM-Mid
radioinsight.com
Musically, Hits 96.5 started out with a playlist very similar to WDUV in Tampa. But with the recent tweak, they are a little closer to WEZI in Jacksonville. Actually they are probably somewhere in between those two. That’s what Cox likes to do. Keep the same basic formula, but tweak it a little for the specific market.
It had to have been recently. I was in the area last month and Retro was still playing English language music.
I've no
WOEX's audio processing sounds very similar to WDUV and WEZI too, perhaps they all use the same processing preset?