Radio in Mexico is a mass medium with 98 percent national penetration and a wider diversity of owners and programming than on television. In a model similar to that of radio in the United States, Mexican radio in its history has been largely commercial, but with a strong state presence and a rising number of noncommercial stations in the 2000s and early 2010s. In August 2015, there were 1,999 legal radio stations, almost 75 percent of them on the FM band.
History
The 1920s: Pioneers and establishment Radio was not invented in Mexico, declares PhD Elizabeth Rodríguez Montiel. The first transmission of the First Radio Station in Mexico was on October 9, 1921, in the city of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. The Electrical Engineer Constantino de Tarnava who previously had made experimental transmissions since 1919 made the first Broadcast service in Mexico under the call sign TND. He himself announced this indicative in order to honor the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Tarnava Notre Dame got in 1929 the call signs XEH and this radio station operates until today (2021). Besides this fact, the development of Mexican radio would take place simultaneously in various cities around the country, as opposed to the rather centralized, Mexico City-based development of television. One of the first radio transmissions (not Broadcast Service but radio telephone and radiotelegraph stations) it seems to be taken in 1921 as well. This as part of celebrations of the centennial of the signing of the Treaty of Córdoba, which formalized Mexican independence. On September 27, 1921, during the Centennial International Commercial Exposition in Mexico City, a small radio station (telephone station) was set up by the government and run by Agustín Flores, an inspector in the General Directorate of Telegraphy. That same night, the Gómez Fernández brothers mounted their first radio transmissions, also in Mexico City; their station, with 20 watts power, would operate until January 1922, with programs of one hour on Saturday and Sunday. As written before, Constantino de Tárnava, a ham radio operator in Monterrey, Nuevo León, began in October 9, 1921, regular transmissions of a station he called TND (Tárnava Notre Dame); de Tárnava would later own XEH-AM, one of Nuevo León's first licensed radio stations. The next year, radio stations would begin operations in Mexico City, Pachuca, Cuernavaca, Guadalajara, Morelia, San Luis Potosí, Chihuahua, Chihuahua, and Ciudad Juárez. Also in 1922, the National Radio League (Liga Nacional de Radio), the first radio association in Mexico, was formed. On May 8, 1923, the station "El Universal/La Casa del Radio" (later CYL) came to air in Mexico City with 50 watts of power. The station was co-owned by the El Universal newspaper and Raúl Azcárraga, owner of the La Casa del Radio chain of radio stores. Andrés Segovia and Manuel Ponce were among the luminaries present at the station's formal inauguration that evening. That September, the station would increase its power to 500 watts; it would leave the air in 1928. On September 15, the "El Buen Tono" cigarette company began the operation of its own station. This station would receive the CYB callsign after Mexico was assigned a range of international callsigns in 1924, and upon the switch of Mexico's callsign assignments to "X" in 1929, it would become XEB, the oldest Mexican radio station still in operation today. 1924 also saw the launch of radio stations by the Excélsior newspaper (CYX) and the Secretariat of Public Education (CZE, later XFX). The latter station, on 560 kHz, would operate until 1929, and the SEP would not operate another radio station until the 1960s. The first communications law, the Electric Communications Law, was promulgated in 1926 by President Plutarco Elías Calles. Article 12 of the law provided that radio programming "should not harm the security of the State" or "the established government". In 1929, callsigns were reassigned again. Mexico received the range XAA to XPZ; callsigns beginning in XE would be used for broadcasting. In the 1940s, the XH callsign series would be used for new FM and TV stations, though certain stations of both types that were co-owned with existing AM stations were allowed to use XE calls (such as XEWV-FM in Mexicali or XET-TV in Monterrey).
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