MUG Shot
Mexicali AM and FM legally dead
The INE’s June national catalog update announced the end of the legal road for Mexicali radio stations XEAA-AM 1340 and XHMUG-FM 96.9. Their concessions expired on June 8 and March 29, 2021, respectively, but only now have they been issued their death certificates. These are the first concesiones vencidas in Mexicali.
XHMUG (Radio y Televisión Internacional), whose name came from the original assignment to nearby Murguía, was born March 30, 1994, to Héctor Renato Brassea Eguía. It originally was a Class A outlet on 94.1 MHz before moving into Mexicali. The ownership is the OIR operation in Baja California and Sonora with María Adriana Aguirre Gómez as the 99.97% owner, but Radiorama has run XHMUG since 2016 except for a sublease to Grupo Larsa Comunicaciones.
XEAA (Grupo Radiodigital Siglo XXI) has not been in reliable if any service since the late 2010s, so this truly is its last hurrah. The concession expiration news comes in the month of the 90th anniversary of the original award, on June 8, 1934, to Carlos Blando, though it claimed a history starting a year earlier, in June 1933. The station was sold routinely in the late 1930s and early 1940s, with the SCT archives indicating transfers to Rosendo Herrera G. (1936), Alberto González (1937), and Consuelo Tonella de Eguía (1943), also listed as Consuelo Tonella King. Those two last names should get you thinking about XHMUG and…XENT and XHK in La Paz, Baja California Sur, respectively. Grupo Radiodifusoras Capital acquired this station in 2004 and sold it to Grupo Radiodigital Siglo XXI in 2008.
Otherwise, the catalog update was pretty light on substantive matters. The new stations and call signs had already turned up and been reported, and the other removed station was a known entity: XHUCAH-FM Tuxtla Gutiérrez. There is little change in the XHRI and XHVILL cases that have been at the Radio and Television Committee for some time; in the latter, the station has filed for more time to resume operations.
We learned that…
- The Hidalgo state TV network has been out of service in Ixmiquilpan (XHIXM-TDT) since April 19, when the LNB on its satellite dish was struck by lightning. As a result, there is no incoming signal to rebroadcast.
- Issues with the satellite feed to the Michoacán state radio network in Zitácuaro are apparently related to 5G service. I am not quite sure what 5G signal would interfere down there, but their signal is indeed in the 3.7–4.0 GHz band. The Sistema Michoacano de Radio y Televisión has received quotes on filters to remedy the problem.
The IFT’s virtual channel and multiprogramming lists were updated on Wednesday, with two notable and previously unreported items. XHCTAP-TDT, Imagen Televisión in Agua Prieta, Sonora, has received the non-conforming virtual channel 10. This is because channel 3 is assigned to a U.S. station, KFTU-DT in Douglas, Arizona. Saltillo’s XHPEAB-TDT received channel 16.
