English-Language Stations Dealing with Mexican Elections

I've noticed on several stations licensed to Mexico but serving the English-language population in San Diego that they are running campaign ads for upcoming Mexican elections. But they're quite odd. I assume it's required as part of the license for 92.5 XHRM, 1090 XEPRS and 105.3 XHPRS. I haven't listened to XETRA-FM or XHITZ but no doubt they're doing it too.

It seems candidates get to put a radio commercial together, maybe around 20 seconds, for airing on all stations in the Tijuana area. But they don't have professional writers. And then the English-language stations must translate the candidates' ads into English, even though sometimes the translations are poorly done. So we hear an ad with some generic music saying "Long Live Mexico! Pedro Gonzalez is running for senator. He says he is not running against his opponents but for the good of Mexico."

Often a male voice and female voice will alternate. "Ernesto Ruiz. Ernesto Ruiz. Ernesto Ruiz. Vote for the best candidate in District 37. Ernesto Ruiz, Ernesto Ruiz, Ernesto Ruiz." Sometimes the station runs three in a row of these spots.

Meanwhile I assume almost all the listeners to these English language stations are in the U.S. and virtually nobody hearing these ads will be casting a ballot in the election.

I always knew English-language stations have to run La Hora Nacional at 10pm on Sunday. But now I realize they also must run Mexican election ads. And every night at midnight, every station must play El Himno Nacional (The Mexican National Anthem). So in the middle of airing ESPN, 1090 XEPRS must break for a two-minute instrumental version of the anthem. For some odd reason, XHRM plays a vocal version. The station has a disclaimer before it airs that Magic 92.5 is a U.S. station licensed to Mexico and must follow Mexican regulations. Regular programming resumes in two minutes.

As a person who has never really listened to SD radio (or really, any radio near the Mexican border), do these stations get the luxury of putting legal IDs, Himno Nacional, and La Hora Nacional during a “natural break in programming” like US stations or do they have a “hard out” right at xx:00:00?

Gregg. said:

I've noticed on several stations licensed to Mexico but serving the English-language population in San Diego that they are running campaign ads for upcoming Mexican elections. But they're quite odd. I assume it's required as part of the license for 92.5 XHRM, 1090 XEPRS and 105.3 XHPRS. I haven't listened to XETRA-FM or XHITZ but no doubt they're doing it too.

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Don't forget to add 91x to that list as well.

Yes, 91X is XETRA-FM. There are six Mexican stations broadcasting in English to the San Diego Market:

90.3 XHITZ....Top 40/CHR....Z90....#7 tie
91.1 XETRA-FM....Alternative Rock....91X...#21
92.5 XHRM....Rhythmic AC....Magic 92.5....#7 tie
105.7 XHPRS....Classic Hits....105.7 Max-FM (formerly The Walrus)....#19
1090 XEPRS....Sports....The Mighty 1090....#24 tie
1700 XEPE...Sports/Business....ESPN 1700....DNS

Of course, plenty of Spanish-language stations in Tijuana are aimed at listeners in the San Diego Market as well. Six of them are listed in the San Diego ratings, including #11 104.5 XHLTN Spanish AC and #20 99.7 XHTY Regional Mexican.

seattlesarchiebunker said:

As a person who has never really listened to SD radio (or really, any radio near the Mexican border), do these stations get the luxury of putting legal IDs, Himno Nacional, and La Hora Nacional during a “natural break in programming” like US stations or do they have a “hard out” right at xx:00:00?

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Not sure about the others, but I'm pretty sure I've heard a Mexican station ID slightly before the top of the hour. Not sure if it’s still the case, but they used to have to ID at :30, too.

Mexican stations also have to carry the President's speeches, though I've heard some air English translations.

The ID & required Mexican PSA's are usually buried in the stop sets. I used to have to go down to Mexico to broadcast on one of those stations. On Sunday evenings, when La Hora Nacional came on, the 'engineer' from the Mexico side brought in a portable radio, turned on an AM channel that was broadcasting 'La Hora' and would put a mike up to it. Sounded really good...

seattlesarchiebunker said:

As a person who has never really listened to SD radio (or really, any radio near the Mexican border), do these stations get the luxury of putting legal IDs, Himno Nacional, and La Hora Nacional during a “natural break in programming” like US stations or do they have a “hard out” right at xx:00:00?

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Listening to The Mighty 1090 (XEPRS) they play a normal ad break before the National Hour, then go right into it. I believe the program is pre-recorded but must air at 10pm Sunday.

The instrumental version of the Mexican anthem plays at 12 midnight and at 5am on the station. The station IDs at the top of the hour have a soft, quick female voice in Spanish (mentioning Baja California) then into a deep male voice in English saying "San Diego's Sports Leader, The Mighty Ten Ninety".

I guess it's a case where newcomers to the U.S. want to learn English and hearing some English content on a Latin radio station is accepted. But some Americans think Spanish is a nuisance. Some people even complain about phone messages where you are asked to press one for English, two for Spanish. These days, they only ask in Spanish to press two. Doing nothing connects you to English automatically.

Back to the OP: I just listened to XEPRS and the station does run El Himno Nacional at 4:58 a.m., as well as 11:58 p.m. (It runs a few minutes early so 1090 can rejoin ESPN at the top of the hour.) I wonder why it gets two plays a day? Maybe Mexican law says it must be played at midnight AND 5 a.m.?

About 91X. I was listening over the internet. I suspect XETRA-FM played the national anthem on the air at midnight and 5am, but blocked it on the internet stream. I could just hear at the end of a few commercials the words "Back to regular programming" as we rejoined the air product. I assume if the air product was playing commercials at midnight and 5 a.m., just slightly different ones, there'd be no need to say "back to regular programming." Perhaps someone in So. Cal. could check 91X on the air.

Gregg. said:

I guess it's a case where newcomers to the U.S. want to learn English and hearing some English content on a Latin radio station is accepted. But some Americans think Spanish is a nuisance. Some people even complain about phone messages where you are asked to press one for English, two for Spanish. These days, they only ask in Spanish to press two. Doing nothing connects you to English automatically.

Back to the OP: I just listened to XEPRS and the station does run El Himno Nacional at 4:58 a.m., as well as 11:58 p.m. (It runs a few minutes early so 1090 can rejoin ESPN at the top of the hour.) I wonder why it gets two plays a day? Maybe Mexican law says it must be played at midnight AND 5 a.m.?

About 91X. I was listening over the internet. I suspect XETRA-FM played the national anthem on the air at midnight and 5am, but blocked it on the internet stream. I could just hear at the end of a few commercials the words "Back to regular programming" as we rejoined the air product. I assume if the air product was playing commercials at midnight and 5 a.m., just slightly different ones, there'd be no need to say "back to regular programming." Perhaps someone in So. Cal. could check 91X on the air.

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The internet stream blocks about 30% of commercials (often with an "oldie" from the 90s) The national anthem is heard online maybe once per week. The full commercial load and the national anthem, along with all of the other governmental announcements are heard over the air.

DavidEduardo said:

...running Spanish material on an English language stations brings out the worst in some people.

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What does the Drumph listen to in DC?
They HAVE TO mix in some Spanish; please, anything...LOL!
"Enviamos este saludo al Presidente de los Estados Unidos de America".

Here is an article on the breakdown of eligible Mexican voters by US city. The numbers may be larger than you think.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com...ifornia/sd-me-vote-abroad-20180408-story.html

Gregg. said:

Meanwhile I assume almost all the listeners to these English language stations are in the U.S. and virtually nobody hearing these ads will be casting a ballot in the election.

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I have a lot to say on this topic...

Gregg. said:

Back to the OP: I just listened to XEPRS and the station does run El Himno Nacional at 4:58 a.m., as well as 11:58 p.m. (It runs a few minutes early so 1090 can rejoin ESPN at the top of the hour.) I wonder why it gets two plays a day? Maybe Mexican law says it must be played at midnight AND 5 a.m.?

About 91X. I was listening over the internet. I suspect XETRA-FM played the national anthem on the air at midnight and 5am, but blocked it on the internet stream. I could just hear at the end of a few commercials the words "Back to regular programming" as we rejoined the air product. I assume if the air product was playing commercials at midnight and 5 a.m., just slightly different ones, there'd be no need to say "back to regular programming." Perhaps someone in So. Cal. could check 91X on the air.

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The Local Media stations don't stream the Mexican ads. The BCA stations do. I have a bunch of recordings (from stream mostly, some from the AM signal of XEPE) of the translated PSAs. Good for so many laughs—translation errors and typos, stumbling over names of Mexican states (Tullix-callah and San Louie Potosi come to mind), and in one case they actually removed Donald Trump's name from a Mexican political ad! I could do a better job at Mexican compliance. They could learn from me that they don't actually have to ID because that was in the old broadcasting law but not the new one, for instance (the old Ley Federal de Radio y Televisión had a 30-minute ID requirement; the new law has none at all, so they could do legal IDs in English if they wanted!!)

The relevant law on the anthem is Article 253 of the Ley Federal de Telecomunicaciones y Radiodifusión. Stations must play the anthem at 6am and midnight. The RTC provides a short and long version, though most stations nationwide take the long one.

I always knew English-language stations have to run La Hora Nacional at 10pm on Sunday. But now I realize they also must run Mexican election ads.

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The government through the National Electoral Institute (INE) has a monopoly on the regulation and distribution of political air time. There is a distribution formula by party vote share and the number of parties, and there is also space for ads from the INE, state electoral authority, electoral courts, and the FEPADE (electoral crimes prosecutor). Parties, candidates and outside groups are forbidden from buying their own. And the INE, which has a national infrastructure to monitor the compliance of every radio and TV station in the country, is not afraid to slap fines on noncompliant stations.

I like to say to people unfamiliar with Mexican regulation on broadcasting that stations have three masters.

Stations get their concessions (licenses) from the IFT, the Federal Telecommunications Institute. The IFT handles all matters technical, approves station sales, and handles most of the back-office stuff that we associate with the FCC. If you've heard of the SCT, the IFT has taken over pretty much everything related to broadcasting from the SCT. All the SCT gets to do is provide an opinion at renewal time.

Regulation of content, the PSAs that air outside of electoral season, non-electoral cadenas nacionales like occasional presidential speeches, and other programming matters (La Hora Nacional) falls with an agency called RTC (Dirección General de Radio, Televisión y Cinematografía), which is housed in the Secretariat of Governance (also translated as the Interior). The RTC maintains the DDIM system that delivers stations PSAs (including the long-form programs of 5 to 10 minutes produced by everyone from the UNAM to the Supreme Court to the Secretariat of Labor), their PSA schedule or pauta, and the cadenas. The RTC has become more and more light-touch with the passage of time. Since 2013, they've only fined stations twice — once for inappropriate contesting and another for inappropriate language.

La Hora Nacional is pre-recorded and organized in a 30+30 format. The first half-hour is national. Most states produce their own half-hour, but RTC offers the "complementary" second half-hour for the few states that don't (I'm not sure if Baja California does). (Sunday's La Hora Nacional will be an exception in which the full hour is national, probably because it is Election Day; it looks like all through the general election campaign RTC provides the full hour.)

Conversely, the INE (IFE prior to 2014) is serious business for every station, enforcing requirements like the obligation to transmit at least two of the three presidential debates, electoral advertising, etc. It's to the point where border blaster station groups like BCA and Local Media should probably train their continuity/traffic people on Mexican electoral law, especially their staffed site operators (Mexican transmitter sites still have a manual staffing requirement).

In any event, today marks the beginning of the period of reflection or veda electoral - the campaign/party/candidate ads disappear, and nobody can publish public opinion surveys. There will likely be some additional cadenas nacionales from the INE on Sunday night, too.

Yup, they just slotted three cadenas nacionales for Sunday.

While the request comes from the SEGOB, the cadenas are coming from the INE at 12pm, 8pm and 11pm (Central). They will be delivered by Lorenzo Cordero, the president of the INE. The first two will be about the opening and closing of the polls and the third will include information from the first rapid returns.

Polls open earlier than noon.

I worked on-air weekends and fill-in at Z-90 for a few months in 1989 when they were a Rock 40 format ("California's Rock and Roll Hits"). We worked out of the Mexico studio on the hill and parked under the FM tower for 3 stations. Laws may have been a bit different back then. We had a cool Legal ID that only ran at the bottom of the hour. The opening part of the jingle just said "Noventa Punto Tres, Baja California, Mexico" and then the Z-90 jingle that kind of sounded like alternative rock. I knew we weren't running the legal call letters at all - I think today they still only say "Zeta Noventa." Our top of the hour was a big "From high atop Mount Success, 100,000 watts of music power" into a power jingle - no legal ID whatsoever. On Sunday nights either leading into "La Hora Nacional" or coming out of it (I can't remember now) we had a different ID that said "Broadcasting from high atop Mount Success, we're California's X-H-T-Z" then a power jingle that faded out.

We did the microphone up to the portable AM radio for the National Hour - I was told that we did it that way on purpose so people would think we were off the air for maintenance and that some weak Spanish signal was coming through on the same frequency. We only played the Mexican National Anthem ONCE per day, around 4:30 AM (or 4) preceded by a 30-second Spanish disclaimer that correctly identified the call letters as XHITZ, our location and power - probably the ONLY time we were doing it the legally correct way.

Although I don't remember any silly-style election ads we had to play, we were required to play the Mexican Tourism Board ads a couple of times an hour - ours differed slightly from the ones that 91X were doing. They would focus on a visual description of some Mexican resort area and a tagline - "Mexico - why go anywhere else?" or maybe it was "Adventure Awaits You in Mexico" or a combination of the two.

A couple of times a year we got word when the President was going to do his address and we had to basically switch over to it for anywhere from 3 to 7 hours those days, meaning the jock just had to sit there and wait until it was over.

Back when it was still Calformula, I remember always hearing the "Zeta Noventa, Baja California Mexico" legal ID.

Here's a 2016 ID from Fybush that spells out the calls REALLY fast: http://www.tophour.com/audio/San Diego CA/fm0903_2016-04_xhitz_sfybush.mp3