Origins

  Border radio stations, located in Mexican cities bordering the United States from California to Texas, came into being in the 1930s, when broadcasting became big business and U.S. network programming defined itself through specific genres of programming and advertising. Border stations could transmit more powerful signals than U.S. law permitted, could and did advertise products considered fraudulent under U.S. law, and could and did offer programming-particularly "hillbilly" music-that U.S. networks failed to offer.

     Although the U.S. government officially worked through a dominant U.S. network-the National Broadcasting Company (NBC)-and its powerful owner, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), to expand global markets, "border blasters" looked to fill unserved market niches. Although actual audience comparisons are impossible to make since border stations did not subscribe to ratings services such as Hooper, the border stations' own records of selling products in the 1930s are indeed impressive. The official authorities on both sides of the border never liked these clever entrepreneurs but often could do little about directly shutting them down. Border stations such as XED-AM-located across the border from Laredo, Texas-successfully sold Mexican lottery tickets by mail to listeners in the United States, who could also listen to XED-AM for the results. Lottery promotion was at that time strictly forbidden under U.S. radio law.

     The Mexican authorities accommodated "outlaw" radio entrepreneurs-some of whom, such as Dr. John Brinkley, had been denied broadcasting licenses in the United States­ because it seemed to them that the United States and Canada had divided up all the long-range frequencies between themselves, allocating none for Mexico. In 1931 Dr. Brinkley opened XER-AM (called XERA-AM by 1935) in Villa Acuna, Mexico; later in the 1930s, Brinkley also bought XED-AM, changing its name to XEAW-AM. Indeed, these constant changes were one of the key traits of border radio, because entrepreneurs knew that they risked prosecution if and when Mexican and U.S. authorities came to some agreement.

     Brinkley used border radio and its hillbilly music to make money by selling "medical miracles" that the American Medical Association (AMA) deemed fraudulent. (The AMA had pressured the Federal Radio Commission to get Brinkley off the air.) He built a transmitter with 300-foot towers. Out of the range of American restriction, station XER-AM started broadcasting with a power of 75,000 watts, with a remote studio linked by phone lines to the Rosewell Hotel in Brinkley's new headquarters in Del Rio, Texas. The station started operating in October 1931, with gala celebrations in both towns. XER-AM offered more than just hours of pseudoscientific lectures from Dr. Brinkley: it also featured the stars of country music of the day-singing cowboys, fiddlers, a Mexican studio orchestra, and many guests.

     Thanks to XER-AM's amazing power, Brinkley could be heard as far away as Chicago. His busy Mexican lobbyists succeeded in allowing him to boost power, which made XER-AM for a time the most powerful radio station in the world at a shattering 1 million watts, a signal that for a short time smashed everything in its path and could be heard in New York and Philadelphia-sometimes to the exclusion of all other channels.

     Even broadcasting at only 100,000 watts (twice the power of the largest American stations), Brinkley was able to reach his potential customers. Significant in radio history, he pioneered the use of electrical transcription discs, even as NBC and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) were insisting that listeners preferred live broadcasts. Brinkley also deserves a place in the history of country music, because he kept alive the career of the fabled Carter Family. But in time both U.S. and Mexican authorities took away his radio stations under the provisions of the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement treaty, which mandated which country got to use which frequencies. Brinkley died in 1942. before the U.S. Internal Revenue Service could finish suing him for failure to pay taxes.

     Although Brinkley was surely the most extreme case, border stations' power generally ranged from 50,000 to 500,000 watts. Listeners reported hearing Mexico-based signals in all parts of the United States and even in Canada. Network affiliates located near a border signal on the AM dial were often drowned out, or at least interfered with, as border stations overwhelmed them. And since border stations were beyond any code of good conduct that network radio or U.S. law required, they could sell and say almost anything they wanted; indeed, border stations hawked items and made claims that would have been disallowed and even prosecuted in the United States, such as pitches for miracle medicines and sex­ual stimulants and the hawking of donations for phony religious institutions.

     Consider the case of Crazy Water Crystals, owned by Carr P. Collins, entrepreneur and political adviser to Texas politician W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel (elected governor in 1938 and 1940). Crazy Water Crystals promised to revive a sluggish system; the crystals were produced in Mineral Wells, Texas, by evaporation of the town's fabled "Crazy" water. In 1941, when the United States and Mexico began to cooperate as part of the efforts surrounding World War II, Mexican authorities confiscated Collins' station.

Country Music

     Border radio fulfilled the needs of the audience for hillbilly music, needs that the networks only partially met with The Grand Ole Opry and The National Barn Dance. In the 1930s there were many local hillbilly radio shows, but the supply never matched the demand, so border stations often blanketed the United States with songs by the Carter Family, Cowboy Slim Rinehart, Patsy Montana, and others.

     The greatest beneficiaries were the Carter Family. To call the Carter Family-A.P. Carter, Sara Carter, and Maybelle Carter-the first family of country music is a historical truth, because their famed Bristol, Tennessee, recording sessions in 1928 established country music as a recording, and later as a radio, musical genre. But by the mid-19 30s, their style had been supplanted by that of singing cowboys such as The National Barn Dance's Gene Autry and the rising stars of the Grand Ole Opry, such as Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubb. Thus, few were surprised that the Carters were tempted by the lucrative contract offered by XERA-AM from 1938 to 1942 to work for Brinkley. They needed the money, and Brinkley gave them unparalleled exposure. Jimmie Rodgers, a nascent country star, helped inaugurate XED-AM in Reynosa, Mexico, for similar reasons.

     More obscure hillbilly stars benefited as well. Nolan "Cowboy Slim" Rinehart, often called the "king of border radio," was border radio's answer to Gene Autry and the other singing cowboys. Rinehart began his singing career just as border radio was beginning, and although he first appeared on KSKY­ AM from Dallas, he gravitated to XEPN-AM in Piedras Negras, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas. After his initial appearances on XEPN-AM, the station was deluged with mail, and soon Rinehart was being electrically transcribed and then played on all border stations from Tijuana east to Reynosa. Rinehart had no contract with a U.S. record label, and so he made his additional monies on tour selling songbooks. This was a marginal existence, with few of the paths to fame and fortune enjoyed by those on the Grand Ole Opry.

     Listeners were dedicated, and some even became country music stars. The case of Hank Thompson is instructive. Born in 1925, Thompson loved these border stations while he was growing up in Waco, Texas: they alone played and programmed country music nearly all day. Border radio should be remembered not only for creating stars, but also as an inspiration for future stars, who as children had access to inspiration around the clock from border stations. Webb Pierce, Jim Reeves, and other stars of the 1950s appeared live on XERF­ AM with country disc jockey Paul Kallinger partially as a pay­ back. Border stations helped develop the music that would later become known as "country and western," which would by the year 2000 be simply known as country, the most popular format on radio.

Rock and Roll

     Top-40 pioneered rock music on U.S. radio. But since U.S. stations avoided playing rock's raunchier records, border stations in Mexico filled the gaps. This phenomenon is exemplified by the career of disc jockey Wolfman Jack, who, in the late 1950s, after a series of disc jockey jobs in the United States, appeared on XERF-AM, across from Del Rio, Texas, and sold collections of hit records while "spinning rock" in his own unique style. Although Wolfman Jack's broadcasts hardly constituted anything new in format radio, other than their utter outrageousness, they became far more famous after the fact as a result of the hit movie American Graffiti, a tribute song by the Guess Who, and a nationally syndicated radio program in the United States.

All-News Format

     But border radio should not be remembered solely for fostering interest in country and rock music. The first commercially successful all-news radio operation in North America went on the air in May 1961 from XETRA-AM (pronounced "x-tra") from Tijuana, Mexico, and was aimed at southern California, not at Mexican audiences. This 50,000-watt AM station was operated by radio pioneer Gordon Mclendon. Before Mclen­ don took over, it was border station XEAK-AM, which played rock music aimed at southern California teenagers. By 1961 there was a glut of rock format stations in southern California, so Mclendon tried an all-news format instead. XETRA-AM was a headline service, with a 15-minute rotation that was later stretched to 30 minutes when Mclendon discovered that Los Angeles commuters were trapped in their cars for far more than a quarter hour. Mclendon went to great lengths to disguise XETRA-AM's Mexican base and tried to make it seem like just another Los Angeles AM radio station. Jingles repeated over and over: "The world's first and only all-news radio station. In the air everywhere over Los Angeles." The only address announced was that of the Los Angeles sales office. The station was required to give its call letters and location every hour, so Mclendon ran a tape spoken in Spanish in a soft, feminine voice that was backed by Hispanic music, followed in English by a description of Mexico's tourist attractions, suggesting to listeners that XETRA-AM was running an advertisement for vacations in Mexico rather than the required call letters and station location.

     Los Angeles radio competitors complained to the FCC, contending that such masking was certainly unethical and possibly illegal. At first, because of Gordon McLendon's reputation as a radio pioneer, XETRA-AM was able to draw even national advertisers. By 1962 the station was making a profit, in part because it was strictly a "rip-and-read" station employing no actual reporters, only a dozen announcers who rewrote wire and newspaper copy and who frequently rotated shifts so as to make the broadcasts seem fresh and new. In the background the teletype's tick-tick-ticking was ever-present. XETRA-AM sounded as though its announcers were sitting in a busy, active newspaper office. But in the end, like the rock format, this format proved too easy to copy, and with competition came lower profits. Eventually Mclendon turned to other, more profitable ventures.

Later Incarnations

     In the 1980s, the United States and Mexico reached an international agreement that allowed shared use of clear channel stations. U.S. radio owners now cared less, however, because FM's limited-distance signals had become audience favorites, and AM's long-range radio was less valuable. The border stations went the way of the clear channel AM stations that had once blanketed much of the United States, and with common U.S. owners and all-recorded sounds, the niche programming of FM radio fulfilled the needs of the marketplace far better than the limited number of AM stations that broadcast from the 1930s through the 1960s. There are still border stations, but now nearly all of them create programs in Spanish for audiences in nearby U.S. communities and compete in the major radio markets with dozens of other stations.