All but a few Mexican AMs moving to FM

[davideduardo]

I meant to post this here a few days ago, and somehow put it on the aircheck collectors board...

This link shows the changes in AM to FM by 90% of all Mexican AM stations.

http://www.cft.gob.mx/images/InfraestructuraFM_31_08_12.pdf

One very interesting one is to be found under the state of Coahuila, where XERF-1570 is migrating to FM only, and the 1570 operation will be closed after a transition period.

Existing AMs are at

http://www.cft.gob.mx/images/InfraestructuraAM_31_08_12.pdf

... but all but about 125 of these will disappear and not be relicensed.

 

[jd]

Existing AMs are at

http://www.cft.gob.mx/images/InfraestructuraAM_31_08_12.pdf

... but all but about 125 of these will disappear and not be relicensed.

Would stations not migrating to FM be allowed to stay on until their licenses expire (many of them several years from now) or will this happen much sooner?

 

[davideduardo]

Existing AMs are at

http://www.cft.gob.mx/images/InfraestructuraAM_31_08_12.pdf

... but all but about 125 of these will disappear and not be relicensed.

Would stations not migrating to FM be allowed to stay on until their licenses expire (many of them several years from now) or will this happen much sooner?

The AMs that can't move (large cities like Puebla, Mexico City, GDL and MTY and along the US border) and those that don't want to (rural stations serving, predominantly, indigenous populations) will stay as they are for as long as they continue to renew their permits or conncessions.

In some states, as few as 1 or 2 stations will be left on AM. A couple appear to have none.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

I wonder if they will lift the 500 watt nighttime limit for US stations on Mexico Class I-A frequencies any time soom. Mexico put the kibbosh on an agreement to allow just 1000 watts nighttime on those frequencies when there was much opposition to NAFTA in the US.

 

[boombox]

What a drag. I like hearing the Mexican stations when the auroral conditions kick in.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I meant to post this here a few days ago, and somehow put it on the aircheck collectors board...

This link shows the changes in AM to FM by 90% of all Mexican AM stations.

http://www.cft.gob.mx/images/InfraestructuraFM_31_08_12.pdf

One very interesting one is to be found under the state of Coahuila, where XERF-1570 is migrating to FM only, and the 1570 operation will be closed after a transition period.

Existing AMs are at

http://www.cft.gob.mx/images/InfraestructuraAM_31_08_12.pdf

... but all but about 125 of these will disappear and not be relicensed.

Interesting - if we could get US stations to do likewise, it would go a long way to relieving interference on the AM band. I bet there is nowhere on the planet that escapes the babbling of too many stations on the AM band in North America. At least in darkness paths.

 

[FreddyE1977]

Floating one of my favorite conspiracy theories again....

These governments have seen what happened here in the US in the 80's and early 90's
after music migrated to FM.

A huge vacuum was created for content on the AM side. This ended up being filled by talk.
Political talk. Which has had huge implications for politicians and bureaucrats ever since.

I think the day Limbaugh took out Jim Wright they all looked at their AM dials and said
"we aren't leaving that vacuum to fill, no way, no how!" Hence if you want FM your
AM goes dark.

 

[davideduardo]

Floating one of my favorite conspiracy theories again....

These governments have seen what happened here in the US in the 80's and early 90's
after music migrated to FM.

No black helicopters in Mexico.

Talk had long ago begun its migration to FM in Mexico.

Mexico City has 9 full power talk / news type stations; on the other hand, there are several fulltime high power AMs there that are silent.

And the way Mexico is transitioning is to "give" an FM channel to any AM that wants one and pays the fee, so any talk or news station that wants to move can do so as long as there are channels available.

Medium size Mexican cities (500,000 to 1,000,000 population) generally have 3 to 5 news and talk stations. As an example, Acapulco has 4. All are going to be on FM when the transition is complete, when there will be no AMs in that city.

There is no silencing of talk voices... the many talk stations on AM in the 4 big cities where moves to FM are not possible because the band is already full will continue to broadcast.

The main purpose of the shift is that the radio industry and the union movement presented the Mexican legislature a projection of a loss of thousands of jobs as AM died. The legislature declared AM to be non-viable and created the transition policy to save and even create jobs.

Talk shows in Mexico seldom feature call-ins ("Tribuna") and generally feature commentators in the style of the MSNBC, CNN and Fox News comentators. There is a pretty good balance between the points of view that reflect the PAN, the PRI and, to some extent, the PRD on the dial, so politicians of all types have an array of more and less favorable voices and no one is disenfranchised.

Oh, and music migrated to FM in the 70's in Mexico just as it did in the US.

Mexico's

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I think the day Limbaugh took out Jim Wright they all looked at their AM dials and said
"we aren't leaving that vacuum to fill, no way, no how!" Hence if you want FM your
AM goes dark.

I'll digress just long enough to say Jim Wright was a corrupt old fogie with his Wright amendment crippling Southwest Airlines. Good riddance when he went. I wonder how much the payoff from DFW airport was?

 

[davideduardo]

I bet there is nowhere on the planet that escapes the babbling of too many stations on the AM band in North America. At least in darkness paths.

Try the Northern half of South America... Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Perú, Bolivia. Although AM stations are going silent due to the economics of broadcasting, it's generally a much more congested band.

Example: Quito, Ecuador has had as many as 42 fulltime non-directional AMs on the air in the last two decades. Today, a few are silent but the band is full of stations... and the whole country is packed with them.

Another: Just in the 1050 kHz and below portion of the dial, Bogotá, Colombia has 13 stations with 10 kw or more. All are fulltime non directional facilities. About half are 50 kw, two are 100 kw and several are 30 kw.

 

[ddsparxx]

If we could get the Cubans to move to FM...

 

[cd637299]

If we could get the Cubans to move to FM...

Got 30 years' time?

cd

 

[stacker]

David said,

One very interesting one is to be found under the state of Coahuila, where XERF-1570 is migrating to FM only, and the 1570 operation will be closed after a transition period.

Wahoo! Let's hope the AM license is surrendered and not parked. It would be nice to get that 250 kW night time record out of the FCC database. While the US has to only protect the border, that 250 kW allocation drives the predicted non-interference contours for many US stations through the roof.

 

[davideduardo]

Wahoo! Let's hope the AM license is surrendered and not parked. It would be nice to get that 250 kW night time record out of the FCC database. While the US has to only protect the border, that 250 kW allocation drives the predicted non-interference contours for many US stations through the roof.

My read of the legislation and the corresponding regulation at the SCT indicates that stations that move to FM must cease operating on AM and surrender the license following a transition period.

There is a gray area as to what happens in cases where an AM license is cancelled and another station that is not moving to FM wishes to move to the better AM frequency. It appears that a few AMs can swap out for better facilities.

That means that, perhaps, 1540 in Monterrey could file to move to 1570 with up to the 250 kw level. Or it might mean that several stations in different areas of Mexico could move to 1570 with higher night power than they have at present.

It also appears that 540 is being vacated by XEWA, which would allow some of the remaining AMs to look at moving to that frequency.

What I think is certain is that Mexico will retain reserved status on the vacated operations and channels.

 

[davideduardo]

If we could get the Cubans to move to FM...

Got 30 years' time?

I was thinking more on the lines of "when pigs fly".

 

[davideduardo]

A good place to look for the relocation of AMs is Fred Cantú's Mexico Radio and TV site.

http://www.mexicoradiotv.com/index.html

You will see a market by market list of stations. The AMs with an FM frequency next to them are almost all the ones that are moving to FM. A few, like XEW in Mexico City, had simulcasts and will keep both AM and FM.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Considering that the Mexico border can be protected to the 25 uV/m by stations far enough from the border to run a full 500 watts nondirectional or even more equivalent, it would seem reasonable to negotiate lifting the 500 watt restriction. Perhaps, since NAFTA now seems irrevocable by either party, they could at least consider an interim 1000 watt restriction on the former Class I-A frequencies on 540, 730, 800, 900, 1050, 1220, and 1570.

 

[cyberdad]

One very interesting one is to be found under the state of Coahuila, where XERF-1570 is migrating to FM only, and the 1570 operation will be closed after a transition period.

Well, now we apparently know why XERF hasn't bothered to restore full authorized power.

 

[cd637299]

.....and there goes any chance for a newly-formed X-Rok 80. Oh well....

cd

 

[davideduardo]

Well, now we apparently know why XERF hasn't bothered to restore full authorized power.

Remember, in its day (50's well into the 80's) XERF only operated from sunset to sunrise.

The business model depended on mail order and donations. When most people moved to FM for music, and religious programs became more available on local AMs, the business model failed.

XERF went broke. The owner could not pay its taxes, and the Mexican government seized it and gave it to the official IMER organization to run. The first decision was to remake the skywave giant that had been selling prayer table cloths and resurrection plants to rural America. The new XERF was a local Ciudad Acuña area station.

Originally, they put a 100 kw transmitter in, thinking they would serve vast areas of Coahuila state. The bureaucrats, of course, did not know that 100 kw in the near-desert areas of northern Coahuila did not go very far on high-band 1570. And with Mexican television penetration virtually total, nobody listened at night.

So they turned the transmitter down. And now they are going to be a nice, local FM. As they should have been all along.