The Missing Lynx
The UAdeO makes history with its television station launch
The history of university television in Mexico is one that is almost always presaged by university radio.
Except for the IPN — whose Canal Once was in and of itself pathbreaking in Latin America — and an early pioneer that started TV and radio very close to each other, every single university to start a TV station already had a radio station:
- Universidad de Sonora: 1962 (radio), 1965 (TV)
- Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León: 1991 (radio), 1990 (TV)
- Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México: 1934 (radio), 2000 (TV)
- Universidad España*: 2005 (radio), 2008 (TV)
- Universidad de Guadalajara: 1973 (radio), 2011 (TV)
- Universidad Autónoma de Durango*: 1999 (radio), 2012 (TV)
- Universidad Juárez del Estado de Durango*: 1976 (radio), 2014 (TV)
- Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco: 2011 (radio), 2016 (TV)
- Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro: 1979 (radio), 2017 (TV)
- Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla: 1997 (radio), 2021 (TV)
- Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo: 2000 (radio), 2021* (TV)
The latest station on air will add this bullet point:
- Universidad Autónoma de Occidente: 1992 (radio), 2021 (TV)
However, there is a massive difference between the UAdeO’s effort and the others: it isn’t in the same city as the radio station.
Mexican university radio stations have fanned out over the years, including some of the ones mentioned above. The UniSon, U de G, UAD, UAQ, BUAP and UAEH, among others, have expanded the reach of their broadcasts by building repeaters elsewhere in their state — and, in the case of the UAD, a seven-station network that is the only multi-state radio broadcast system owned by a Mexican university, public or private. The U de G will have four main TV stations when the Puerto Vallarta transmitter is finally turned on; the BUAP will have two transmitters. (And that’s not including the national services from the IPN and UNAM).
But never has a university established a radio station in one city and then decided to build a TV station — elsewhere.
A History of UAdeO Broadcasting
Back before the university was autonomous, in the early 1990s, the Universidad de Occidente sought to establish a radio station. The SCT responded by handing them a permit for a new station at 1040 on the AM dial, XECUL-AM in Culiacán.
This didn’t sit well with the U de O. Its communications school was on its Los Mochis campus; so too was the rector’s office, and they’d been producing radio programming for air on local commercial stations there since 1984. The SCT let the university exchange its Culiacán permit for one in Los Mochis, and that’s how XEUDO-AM 820 (today XHUDO-FM 89.3) was born in 1992. Today, it is one of four university radio stations operating in northern Sinaloa.
That isn’t to say Culiacán isn’t of importance to the school. It was Culiacán where the first components of what became the UAdeO were activated in 1977 (Los Mochis came a year after). More importantly, perhaps, Culiacán was one of the few state capitals without a local public television service (aside from Canal Once). Sinaloa has sought for years to start a state-run TV operation and applied in December 2007 for a Culiacán station, but nothing has ever materialized (aside from the naming of the Sistema Sinaloense de Radio y Televisión); this may still be pending at the IFT, which at the end of 2020 still had four unadjudicated applications for new public television stations from the Cofetel era and another six from the 2013–14 period.
The then-U de O first made its television application in the 2016 PABF, but it was blindsided by the Sistema Público de Radiodifusión, which filed for the same channel and had priority as a federal agency. The IFT commissioners regretted having to turn down the university when they awarded channel 13 to the SPR. (As it turned out, the SPR would drop that wave of transmitters from its plans altogether.) The university refiled in 2017, this time unopposed, and was given a green light in 2019. While at the end of that year it was announced that a mid-2020 launch was in the cards, COVID-related delays are almost certainly responsible for the extra year it has taken to get a signal to air.
What to Expect?
Next to nothing about the new TV operation — XHCPAR-TDT on channel 9, evidently with virtual channel 19 — has much to do with the established radio operation up the road. The station will be located on the Canal Once tower in Culiacán, and the studios will be at the Ciudad Educadora del Saber de Sinaloa on the northeast outskirts — a site used by multiple academic institutions. About all it will share with Radio UAdeO is its advisory board. The station’s location will deprive it, at least for now, of potential synergies with the established radio operation that every other university station can draw on in its operation.
We have heard little about programming plans, but the well of outside programs should be plentiful for the new station. As of this writing, the UAdeO is not a member of Red México (in fact, the only local member is SISIRT), but it does have the relationship with the IPN, which will be supplying programs. There will be a lot of Canal Catorce, Canal 22 and other material that has never been seen on broadcast TV in Culiacán. It’s also not inconceivable that other Sinaloa institutions contribute to the station. In Culiacán, there is one other operating public university broadcaster (Radio UAS) and one that holds a concession to expand its existing digital station to FM (Radio UPES, whose XHCPAG-FM 89.9 was approved a month after the UAdeO TV station).
