Fresh Air on Mexico City’s New Commercial FM
This story was originally published on the WTFDA Forums on April 24, 2018. Aire Libre did not start going public until it went on test that August and it formally started up in November. This was a major scoop at the time for En Frecuencia, and it was my largest until the concesiones vencidas saga began.
It’s arguably the star story of second-wave migration: the first new, essentially from-scratch, commercial FM station in the capital city in decades. XHINFO-FM 105.3, owned by the Henkel family, came out the winner of the commercial radio lottery for Mexico City’s only available frequency. There’s been hype about the incorporation of former Radioactivo talent, leading to some wildly false headlines, but there’s also been a lot held back.
Well, it’s time to reveal what’s going on at Mexico City’s newest and freshest FM — and it all happened under the radar.
While searching for any news on the fate of 94.7 FM (XHPTUL-FM, class B1) Tulum Q. Roo, one of the stations coming out of IFT-4, I ran across a website with something far more tantalizing at airelibre.fm. The Aire Libre site (Aire Libre means “outdoors”, but I prefer to think of it as “fresh air”) is sparse on information. It’s the last line that blows up the news.
“Aire Libre Tulum 94.7 / CDMX 105.3”
Obviously, nobody’s paid attention. They have just eight Facebook likes and one lone Twitter follower, all on accounts that don’t even have the logo yet.
While tons of ink has been spilled about XHINFO, there’s far less about XHPTUL. Más Radio Telecomunicaciones, S.A.P.I. de C.V., paid 23.8 million pesos for this Class B1 station. Más Radio is co-owned by José Luis Guillermo Fernández Prieto and Rodrigo Humberto González Calvillo. González Calvillo is the director general of CIE Las Américas. CIE is in the entertainment business; it operates the Centro Citibanamex, an important convention center in Mexico City, and it runs the Mexico Grand Prix of Formula 1. Fernández once headed Grupo Imagen, prior to selling it to Grupo Empresarial Ángeles, and he actually put in a bid for the 105.1 frequency in Cancún that became XHNUC-FM in 1988.
Neither XHPTUL or XHINFO are on the air. José Álvarez, director of Aire Libre, said to Nicolás Lucas of El Economista in late March that the station would be on the air in two months, three at most.
I also reread this part of that interview, which now makes 20 times more sense:
“Saldremos al aire en dos meses; máximo en tres. Y también estaremos transmitiendo en la Riviera Maya y en nuestros canales digitales.”
Well, now we know how they got to the Riviera Maya.
Oh, and excluding the XHNUC shadow in Tulum, this is the first ever radio station there (of three total that have been awarded — XHPTLM-FM 93.5 also belongs to Grupo Turquesa, while social station XHICT-FM 104.7 was also recently approved).
