El Paso – Juárez: Radio and the Invisible Border

ABSTRACT

The neighboring cities of El Paso, USA and Juárez, Mexico share a 440-year history. In the almost 100 years since radio came to both cities, listeners have found their favorite stations with little regard for which side of the Rio Grande in which it is licensed. This article starts with how radio developed in the region, a court case that set a US precedent, and the use of early Mexican stations to reach immigrants in the US. It then looks at the contemporary situation where cross-border targeted stations balance US and Mexican regulations. It will be shown that border agnostic listening continues. It also considers how recent changes would allow a Mexican firm to own U.S. stations and a U.S. firm to own Mexican stations.

KEYWORDS:

• El Paso
• media
• XEROK
• LFRT
• Juárez

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The FCC banned cross-ownership of a newspaper and a broadcast station in the same market in 1975, then removed the ban in 2017 (Mirabella 2017).

2 The Sanders Bros. case did not settle the issue. In a 1958 ruling, the District of Columbia Circuit Court affirmed in the Carroll Broadcasting Company case, "We hold that, when an existing licensee offers to prove that the economic effect of another station would be detrimental to the public interest, the Commission should afford an opportunity for presentation of such proof and, if the evidence is substantial (i.e. if the protestant does not fail entirely to meet his burden), should make a finding or findings" (Carroll Broadcasting Company, Appellant, v. Federal Communications Commission, Appellee,West Georgia Broadcasting Company, Intervenor 1958). That decision created the so-called Carroll Doctrine and allowed the commissioners to consider the economics of a market before licensing new stations. The commissioners terminated the Carroll Doctrine in 1988, determining that the public interest was served by competition in the marketplace and an economic review would be anticompetitive (Brotman 2006).

3 In 1937, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti agreed to the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA). The agreement was designed to reduce interference and expanded the AM dial. March 29, 1941 was “moving day” as 802 of the 890 AM stations in the United States switched to new frequencies to achieve compliance with NARBA (Ramsburg 2015).

4 Under a representation agreement, one company sells the advertisements for a station in locations where the station does not have its own sales staff. This is most frequently used for “national” buys through out-of-town advertising agencies. The representative earns a commission on its sales.

5 In 2012, another firm 25% owned by Grupo Radio Centro purchased KXOS-FM in Los Angeles (Jacobson 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation and Broadcast Education Association.