Radio: The Mexican Air

While delegates to the N. A. B. convention in San Francisco shrilly belabored ASCAP last week (see above), a lumbering, thick-maned Mexican, ensconced in a room in the swank Mark Hopkins Hotel, was trying to persuade U. S. broadcasters to help clear up the confusion of wave lengths between Mexico and the U. S. Although his presence at the convention went almost unnoticed, the Mexican was one of the most important figures in Mexican radio. His name: Emilio Azcarraga. His title: President of the Mexican Broadcasting Association.

The Mexican air that Azcarraga wants to keep tidy has many peculiar aspects. Politics provides one of them. During the recent election General Juan Andreu Almazan was never permitted to fling a single amigos mios into a microphone, although his chief rival. General Manuel Avila Camacho, used XEFO, the 5,000-watt official outlet of Cardenas’ Party of the Mexican Revolution. Although Don Juan complained that XEFO was breaking the law prohibiting any station from broadcasting political controversies, the station management pointed out with fine Latin logic that as long as it restricted its mikes to Camacho and withheld them from the Don, there could be no controversy, for only one side was heard. No other station was willing to give Candidate Almazan the benefit of this reasoning.

Aside from political and religious taboos, Mexico’s 103 licensed stations can arrange programs to suit their taste so long as 25% of the music they broadcast is native in composition. Of the 19 major stations concentrated in the Federal District 16 are privately owned. Leaving uplift to the seven Government stations, politics to XEFO, they apply themselves diligently to making their programs artistic successes. Outstanding among them are stations XEW, powered by 100,000 watts, and XEB, which is planning to step up its plant from 20,000 watts to 250,000 watts. (Biggest U. S. stations: 50,000 watts.) But supergiants XEW and XEB are surrounded with none of the glossy pomp of big U. S. stations.

Clambakes. The casual atmosphere of a Mexican studio would give a U. S. radio producer the jitters. Performers wander around, often exchange quips with the studio audience. No “Applause” and “Silence” signs interfere with the fun at these clambakes. Studio spectators tolerate no interference with their right to cheer or boo. Like all Mexicans, they delight in amateur programs. Favorite among gong shows is one sponsored by Bristol-Myers (Sal Hepatica, Ipana) which has been broadcast from XEW every Thursday night for five years. Presided over by a glum, bald, dead-pan wag named Julio Zetina, the Bristol-Myers program is riotously spontaneous, with everyone from studio technicians to station announcers taking part.

Azcarraga. Dominant in the affairs of XEW, outstanding figure in Mexico’s radio industry, is Emilio Azcarraga. Now 47, Azcarraga used to be a football star at St. Edward’s University at Austin, Tex., first began to dabble in radio in 1921 by distributing RCA battery sets. His mother and four brothers were in business with him.

Today, besides XEW, Azcarraga, through Mexican Broadcasting Co., operates the 50,000 watt-station XEQ at Mexico City and the ornate Teatro Alamedo. With one of his brothers supervising a Chrysler assembly plant, another handling the distribution of RCA Victor sets in Mexico City, Azcarraga, known as Don Emilio to his intimates, makes plenty of time sales in the family circle.

Azcarraga’s business methods are amazingly simple. On the theory that if an artist is not happy without a contract, he will not be happy with one, Emilio rarely enters into written agreements with his talent. Performers are bound by only one stipulation: they cannot work for another station while employed by XEW. With sponsors, Don Emilio is similarly gracious. They can drop their shows whenever they want to so long as they give him time to dig up a fill-in program. Prohibited at the moment by terrific costs (because of the power needed) from organizing a Mexican network, Don Emilio hopes that within two or three years he will be able to start stringing his own and other Mexican stations together. Already his XEW has contracts with 16 stations calling for a two-hour recorded rebroadcast of its programs, and his other station, XEQ, pumps shows to 27 other outlets.

Although the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement, by which Mexico, Canada, Cuba and the U. S. hope to unsnarl the untidy tangle of wave lengths in this continent, will probably not go into effect until late this year, Mexico is trying to straighten out its aerial relations with the U. S. Soon to go into effect is a U. S.-Mexican agreement to exchange four clear channels from Mexico for four clear channels from the U. S. Benefited by this agreement will be 90,000 set owners in the Federal District, more than half of the owners elsewhere in Mexico.

Border Boys. Far from the workaday radio world of Mexico City are the med ical and moral border blasters who shove their way into the U. S. firmament from roaring stations on the Mexican border: Dr. John Richard Brinkley, the goat-gland wizard and Astrologer Rose Dawn, a bouncy blonde plugger for everything from perfume to religious tomes, who use the 180,000 watts of station XERA at Villa Acufia; until recently Norman Baker who used 50,000-watt station XENT, near Nuevo Laredo until the U. S. Government convicted him for using the mails to de fraud ; the Rev. Sam Morris who daily lets fly on the evils of alcohol and Governor Wilbert Lee (“Pass the Biscuits, Pappy”) O’Daniel of Texas, who use 100,000-watt station XEAW at Reynosa.

When the North American Agreement goes into effect these border boys may be doomed in the reallocation of waves.

Poised over them now is the shadow of Emilio Azcarraga, who is sure that he will soon be able to take control of their stations, add a few outlets to the network he hopes to set up.