En Frecuencia Notebook: June 8
By: Raymie Humbert
Tags: Mexico, Radio

En Frecuencia Notebook: June 8

Chiapas scraps plans for two public FMs, while Zacatecas gets five new commercial ones; new public and social station awards; Colima’s Match goes into stealth mode Raymie Humbert Jun 8·3 min read

Ocosingo, Tecpatán Won’t Get FM Stations

The Sistema Chiapaneco de Radio, Televisión y Cinematografía has scrapped plans to build two new FM transmitters in areas where it has AM stations, citing COVID-19-induced budget cuts.

In a letter dated May 25, the agency’s director general, Yesenia Guadalupe Castañeda Fernández, said that COVID-19 and the reallocation of state resources to health needs had left no budget availability to activate the stations. The agency had already had to request an extension of time to build the pair, greenlit in 2018.

XHTECP-FM 95.1 in Tecpatán would have accompanied XETEC-AM 1140, and XHOCH-FM 103.3 was to have been established in the same town as XEOCH-AM 600.

TV Zac Finally Shows Up

So El Financiero and NTR promoted their election coverage on ABC Radio on June 6, and this line in the station list sticks out like five very sore thumbs…

A message to Radio Cañón revealed that these stations are now broadcasting and that they are repeating NTR’s existing XHTGO-FM 90.1.

We’ve only been waiting four years for NTR to build out its Zacatecas stations; XHPINO-FM had been on test with classical music for what seems like forever, with no sign of life elsewhere.

XHPJAL-FM 103.9 isn’t here; the station says it is not yet on the air.

This was the largest chunk of unbuilt FMs associated with the IFT-4 auction. Other notable ones:

Grupo Informativo Fusión Peninsular — 3 stations in Chiapas

Mediasur — 4 stations in Campeche

And, of course, Escápate al Paraíso (Acustik) still has a load of unbuilt AM stations.

Five New Stations from the IFT

The IFT cleared off some of its oldest pending public station applications from the PABF era this week. It greenlit a 2017 application from the Universidad Juárez del Estado de Durango for a new TV station to be built in Gómez Palacio — which will be the second UJED transmitter — as well as a 2018 application from the Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas to build a public FM station for Tampico and a 2019 filing by the Durango state government for a fourth FM in Santa María de Ocotán.

The UJED TV filing marks the first university TV station in the Comarca Lagunera and the first Durango-based local public broadcaster for the two-state area.

The UAT’s Tampico station will be a (presumably higher-powered) return to one of the locations of a former 17-watt Radio UAT repeater, which was lost in a failure to renew five permits for the university’s transmitters outside of Ciudad Victoria.

The Durango state government now owns four stations, including this one in a locality that houses INPI station XETPH-AM (likely responsible for the PABF entry). The expansion comes even as the state is sitting on three unbuilt transmitters in Durango, Ciudad Lerdo/Gómez Palacio and Santiago Papasquiaro.

There were stations for social fans, too:

Raúl Alfredo Pinzón Galván will go on the air with a new FM station serving Jalpan de Serra, Querétaro.

Fernando Díaz Alonso won a social AM in Jalpa, Zacatecas. This may not be a new service, after all: he is the director general of Comunicación Instantánea, S.A. de C.V., which owns XHFP-FM 98.3, formerly on 990 kHz.

Colima’s Match Goes MIA

Grupo ACIR has removed XHCIA-FM 91.7 Colima from its Match website. The station is now running continuous music and official ads with the Match branding.

The station is 50 percent owned by ACIR and one of two controlled by the company in the city. The other 50 percent of Colima Frecuencia Modulada, S.A. de C.V., is owned by former Cuernavaca city councilor Gustavo Petriccioli Morales.

There is no indication at this time of what will replace Match on the station.