Public-service spots have radio listeners wondering
From the San Diego Union Tribune: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/mar/11/public-service-sp...
Public-service spots have radio listeners wondering
Written by Sandra Dibble March 11, 2012
"On a recent weekday morning, San Diego's 91-X was broadcasting its familiar fare of alternative rock, North County traffic updates and upbeat
commercials for cars, mattresses and sandwiches. Out of the blue, a woman's voice came on:
"Oh, and I am really concerned, because the support coordinator will remove the support he's giving me if I don't vote as he wants."
Another woman answered sympathetically: "They wanted to do the same thing to me in the last election."
Bleary-eyed morning commuters might well have wondered: Who were these women? What were they talking about? And what was their message for listeners
tuned to XETRA 91.1 FM, a station owned by Local Media of America?
The station's studios may be in Mira Mesa, but its 100,000-watt signal is sent out from an antenna in Tijuana. The station's license is held through a
Mexican government concession by a Mexican company, Comunicación Xersa, and under Mexican law, it must commit to 48 minutes a day of tiempos
oficiales. That's the term for public-service announcements from Mexico's federal executive, legislative and judiciary branches, as well as from the
country's Federal Electoral Institute and its major political parties.
In Baja California, the spots have been the subject of growing irritation: Why waste valuable airtime, critics complain, that could be used to promote
the state to a vast radio public in Southern California?
XETRA is among a few dozen stations that stretch from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, with audiences in the United States but antennas south of the
border. Many are Spanish-language stations targeting U.S. Latinos. But in San Diego, a half-dozen stations are aimed at English-language listeners.
The call letters are a clue: Mexican stations start with an X, while California stations start with a K.
Other local cross-border stations include XEPRS-AM, know as XX1090, the flagship station of the San Diego Padres. Its offices are in La Jolla, but it
transmits from an antenna in Rosarito Beach.
"We get calls about them," Tex Meyer, vice president and general manager at XX1090, said of the public-service announcements. "The main question is,
'Why do you run them?'"
Broadcasts from Mexico to the United States date back to the 1930s, said Gene Fowler, who researched the phenomenon and cowrote a book on the subject,
"Border Radio." In the early days, these stations - known as border blasters - were operated by a collection of colorful personalities who managed to
sidestep U.S. regulations and reach an even broader American audience by using high-powered transmitters from south of the border.
Most of the stations were along the Texas-Mexico border. But in the mid-1960s, the U.S. disc jockey Wolfman Jack rose to worldwide fame through his
broadcasts sent out over 1090-AM's powerful, 50,000-watt transmitter in Rosarito Beach.
By the mid-1980s, the heyday of border blasters had ended due to the decline of AM radio and a 1972 treaty between the United States and Mexico that
allocated FM frequencies. But with relatively few frequencies in San Diego, U.S. radio station owners have continued to seize the opportunity of
broadcasting from Baja California.
Those that do must comply with Mexican government requirements for all commercial radio stations, including the airing of public-service
announcements.
Without proper context, the announcements can seem zany. Here's a sampling:
*"I told you so, I told you so, I told you so, I told you so. If you don't want this phrase to drive you crazy, check that your name is on the voters
list."
*"If you insert the thread through the eye of the needle for the first time ... and you have always been interested in what happens to your country
... you have to do what it takes to become an electoral observer."
*"2012 expense federation budget, which is approved by the legislative body, strengthens the state's finances ..."
"It's almost like a bad joke," said Gastón Luken Garza, a Mexican federal legislator from Tijuana who has been working in Mexico City to end the
broadcast of these spots to the Southern California market. "It just doesn't make sense."
Tiempos oficiales have been a staple of Mexico's broadcasts media since the 1960s, said Luis Carlos Aztiazarán, head of the Tijuana-based Grupo
Uniradio and president of the Baja California division of the National Chamber of Radio and Television. They came about as a compromise after Mexico's
federal government sought to impose a tax on the country's radio and television stations, which operate under a federal concession, Aztiazarán said.
When Mexico's presidential campaign season opens March 30, members of Baja California's tourism industry fear it won't simply be a question of
confusing announcements, but also negative ones. The rival parties are likely to bring up some uncomfortable subjects such as corruption and drug
violence.
"We're trying to change perception and this type of thing is not benefiting us at all," said Hugo Torres, owner of the Rosarito Beach Hotel and
president of the Baja California Image Committee. The spots are "totally absurd, totally, totally. I don't even know what they're thinking."
Luken wholeheartedly agrees. "It's a shameful waste of a good opportunity to promote Mexico, especially in terms of tourism, trade and culture," he
said.
Luken has been in conversation with Mexico's interior ministry, asking that its spots be replaced with ones that burnish Mexico's image. He also is
preparing a bill that would curb the airing of tiempos oficiales on stations that broadcast to English-language listeners in the United States.
The spots "are lousy and literal translations," Luken said. "They're bad enough in Spanish, but they're even worse in English."
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.”
—Mark Twain
\"La vida es dura, el corazon es puro, y cantamos hasta la madrugada.” (Life is hard, the heart is pure and we sing until dawn.)
—Kirsty MacColl, Mambo de la Luna
\"Alea iacta est.\"
—Julius Caesar
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