Cuaderno En Frecuencia: July 1

Christian TV channel coming to Puebla airwaves; Radio Educación’s water woes; new virtual channels

There’s Life on 6.5

A new TV channel is coming aboard on Multimedios in Puebla, and all signs point to it being the second Christian channel to be carried by a Mexican broadcast TV station. XHMTPU-TDT was approved by the Comisión Reguladora de Telecomunicaciones on June 10 to add a 6.5 channel known as Vida Tv.

A logo for Vida TV shared by Julián Herrera Arzola. This same logo appears in the Multimedios authorization.

Though no third-party programmer was identified in the authorization, the name of the channel alone is attention-grabbing. The only Vida TV that En Frecuencia could identify as possibly being related to this authorization is that owned by Julián Herrera Arzola, whose broadcast holdings include legal stations in the United States (KLVL Houston) and pirates in Mexico, including Radio Vida 97.5 in Puebla and Radio Vida 87.9 in Durango (mentioned last year in a Cuaderno). The website for Arca 7, the umbrella for this operation, also lists stations in Izúcar de Matamoros (98.9 FM); Monterrey (Herrera has mentioned an 87.9 here); Laredo, Texas (KLNT 1490 AM); Conroe, Texas, a suburb of Houston; and Chinameca, Morelos (97.5 FM).

For Mexican broadcast TV, which has been well-shielded from the sort of growth that religious radio has seen, this is a milestone. After from the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God’s Unife, this is the second Christian TV channel ever to be broadcast by a Mexican station. (XHCSBE-TDT Matamoros, which is expected to provide Christian programming, is not yet known on the air.)

Multimedios is no stranger to broadcasting third-party-programmed local subchannels. It just was approved to expand its carriage of Tampico’s City Channel to the rest of the state, and in Ciudad Juárez it aired ABC Televisión (Canal 28) until Canal 28 obtained its own social station concession for Juárez.

Tests in Huichapan

The Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo’s XHCPDW-FM 103.7 Huichapan has begun testing. The new station is the first local service since the state network lost this frequency in 2022.

Water in the Walls

At Radio Educación, leaks have become a big problem and flared up the constant debate over the station’s poorly maintained facilities.

[embed]Tras tormenta, denuncian filtraciones en instalaciones de Radio Educación Trabajadores de Radio Educación difundieron ayer en redes sociales un par de videos en los que se observan filtraciones…www.excelsior.com.mx

The basement level, which contains three studios used by Radio Educación, suffered from water infiltration after storms hit Mexico City on Thursday. A waterlogged ceiling tile evidently fell to the ground.

New Virtual Channel Numbers

The INE’s June catalog update included virtual channel assignments for two new stations:

• RYTSM’s XHCSAL-TDT Guadalajara was given virtual channel 12.
• The Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas’s XHCPGS-TDT Zacatecas was given virtual channel 4.