Xésame
An IFT-4 AM raises questions in Saltillo
This went out from the Facebook page of XHSJ-FM 103.3 Saltillo on August 3:
This isn’t the most exciting news in the world — it’s a bit weird in 2020 to hear a radio station trumpeting it’s on the AM band — but it sure is pretty darn interesting.
‘Cuz that 930 frequency’s been through a bit.
Second SHoT
The story starts in the late 1990s, when XESHT-AM 1430, a then-new station awarded to Radiorama, moved down the dial to 930 kHz. (The move allowed XESHT to go from 500 watts daytime-only to 1,000 day and 250 night.)
XESHT, of course, migrated to FM. It became XHSHT-FM 102.5, which Grupo RCG is now also operating after Multimedios pulled out of lease deals with Radiorama in Saltillo and León at the start of the month.
The 930 frequency recurred in the IFT-4 radio station auction. Nobody cared. Except Media FM, S.A. de C.V., which scooped up eight total AM and FM stations in Michoacán and a trio of Coahuila AM outlets (the others are 1270 Torreón/Gómez Palacio and 1320 Piedras Negras). XESAME-AM 930 went to Media FM for the minimum bid of 673,000 pesos.
Media FM had its eggs in the Michoacán basket. The company successfully launched its group in 2018 as Acustik Michoacán, a news-heavy pop outlet reliant on material from the national Acustik operation (it launched the same day as the Informe Brozo) and co-owned Canal 6 cable TV; after Acustik proved it was a flash in the pan without the money to sustain the hiring of top talent, the stations were rebranded and refocused as grupera “Media Group Radio”.
The six FMs are still around. The two AMs…are something of a who knows. XEMEFM-AM 1240 in Morelia signed on June 14, 2018, and finding proof that XEUORN-AM 750 Uruapan — a call sign saddled with a clerical error — ever operated is quite difficult indeed.
By April 2019, Media FM had shipped XEMEFM back, return-to-sender style, to the former occupant of 1240 in Morelia, the now-XHRPA-FM 102.5:
One Facebook comment indicates that Media Group is back on 1240, but…this is odd.
This isn’t quite what happened in Morelia, as XESJ was on 1250 pre-migration. But the fact that 930 belonged to XHSHT, which RCG is now operating, certainly seems to have something to do with this change.
