The Outlaw Airwaves: Rise of the Border Blasters

 I'm on a Mexican radio, I'm on a Mexican, whoa, radio. Hey everybody, it is The Drought, aka Rick Troutman. Welcome to another episode of The Drought Show Podcast.

That song you're listening to right now is from a band from 1982 called Wave of Voodoo, and the song is called Mexican Radio. Now I had forgot about this song until one of the people I follow on X, her name is Raylene, and she has a wonderful site. If you want to follow somebody that talks about analog music, she's under Undercover Indie.

I suggest you check her out. But anyway, she started talking about, mentioning about Mexican radio, and I'd forgotten all about the history behind Mexican radio. Now if you're a young person, you're like, what is Mexican radio? Is that music out of Mexico? Well, kinda.

But Mexican radio was a huge impact on American radio stations in the 60s and 70s. And another band, a little bitty band from Texas called ZZ Top, they talked about it too on a song called Heard It on the X. So in this episode of The Drought Show, we're going to talk about Mexican radio and how it changed the landscape for radio listening back in the day. And you know what that is? That's next on The Drought Show.

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David Smith at 469-372-1587. That was the infamous Wolfman Jack that got his start, became famous working in what we called the border blasters, the radio stations in Mexico. And he became famous there and he played all, you know, mostly all American music.

And then he moved up into LA area, I believe, and started becoming more famous there when he allowed himself to be an American side of the border. The radio stations back then out of Mexico were called border blasters. And an interesting thing about it was the fact that this was between the 30s and the 60s that this all went on.

The Federal Communication Commission, which is FCC, decided, and I guess I can understand this, decided that they wanted to limit the amount of wattage power the radio stations America had, which at the time was 50,000 watts. I think that's probably because you couldn't bleed into another station in another area and all that stuff. But for those people that didn't grow up at that time, you didn't have the fact that you could listen to a radio station that was broadcasting in Chicago when you lived in Houston.

There was no internet back then. So you had to listen to radio stations that you could pick up on your AM radio. We didn't even listen to FM.

Back then FM radio was mostly classical music. We all knew. So you had to go and listen to radio stations that were in your area and hopefully they would play the genre of music that you liked.

But the difference between the American stations and the Mexican stations was very simple. Wattage. Because the fact is that the radio station XERF had between 100,000 and 250,000 watts of power.

And at one point they even broadcast, you ready for this, half a million watts of power. Now you're probably going, why did they have to have all that power? Well, the fact is you could actually listen to it in different parts of the country because it was so powerful that you could stand, I mean, excuse me, you could listen to Chicago. You could be in, you know, listen to Chicago and you're in Mexican radio and you're like, okay, what's the deal there? A lot of it had to do with what we called weather freaks, which is the way that radio waves bounce off the clouds and all that stuff.

And you can listen to it like that. But they, they broadcast with all that power. And so they had, you could listen to it anywhere personally in the United States, which is a wonderful thing to do.

So they were located along the Mexican border in, you know, towns like Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, Reynosa, Ciudad Acuna, and they targeted U.S. audiences. And they operated under Mexican concessions, which had fewer restrictions, making them untouchable by the FCC because they were Mexico. They couldn't do anything about it.

But you're probably wondering, how did they appeal to American audiences? Well, border blasters aired eclectic programming. They weren't just one genre. They do, they do country music, they do rock and roll, they do religious sermons, and they did infomercials from products like goat gland treatments or mail order baby chicks, which you couldn't do in America.

And so they cover, they cater to, you know, what I consider underserved audiences, including rural Americans. I mean, there wasn't a lot of radio stations in the middle of Kansas at the time. African Americans, Mexican Americans, and their music and cultural content pretty much ignored by the mainstream media stations.

They, you know, they cut into venue, whether it was rock music or country music or whatever they played. Some of the stations like XERA, they started out at 75,000 watts and then went to 500,000 watts. That's a lot of power, folks.

And they had a doctor on there. The guy's name was Dr. John Brinkley. He was an American doctor.

Some people referred to him as a quack doctor. He used XER to promote his controversial globe gland surgeries for impotence, broadcasting from Mexico to evade U.S. medical and broadcasting regulations. And his station featured country music stars like the Carter family, like in John Cash Carter, that kind of guy, which meant that more people listened to him because he had more of appeal to a broader audience.

And that radio station, believe it or not, signal reached as far as Canada and even Europe, making it a pioneer of border broadcasting. It was shut down in 1939 under pressure from the U.S. government because I think they were probably bleeding over to American stations. And Brinkley's flamboyant broadcast mixed medical scams with entertainment, earning him millions, but also scrutiny from U.S. authorities.

Now, we also talked about Wolfman Jack. He was on XERF, which was out at Ciudad Acuna, and it had up to 250,000 watts. It was one of the most powerful stations at the time.

His real name, Wolfman Jack, for those people who want to know, was Robert Weston Smith. He became a legendary DJ in the 50s and 60s, broadcasting rock and roll, blues, and R&B to American audiences. And the one thing that made him interesting was something that we have now, when you talk to somebody, if they listen to streaming, they go, a playlist.

What is on your playlist? So he played all different things and became famous, really, when they did the movie American Graffiti back in 1973 because they were talking about the 50s. His radio station introduced American youth to emerging genres, including early rock and roll, and reached African-American and Mexican-American listeners ignored by U.S. stations. You know, they were targeting basically white America, I think, at the time.

It also aired religious programming and infomercials, which meant that the border blasting stations always had diverse content. And the station that inspired Walla Voodoo's Mexican radio was XED, which had a location right across the border from McAllen, Texas, and Renosa, Mexico. And it had up to 150,000 watts.

It was operated by a company called International Broadcasting Company, which they in turn targeted U.S. audiences with music from Mexican-American artists like Lydia Mendoza. Her music resonated with borderlands communities along the border there in Mexico and America. So your question now is, why was it illegal? Well, 500,000 watts is a lot of power.

The FCC, Federal Communication Commission, strict regulations on AM stations back then, as I said earlier, 50,000 watts max, and content to prevent signal interference with regulated advertising. The radio station's border blasters, on the other hand, operated under Mexican licenses, ignored these rules, and using superpower transmitters, they caused interference with the U.S. stations. Stations like XER promoted fraudulent medical treatment, which violated, we know, was against U.S. advertising laws.

Religious and commercial content often pushed boundaries, leading to U.S. pressure on Mexico to regulate these stations. Well, finally, the U.S. government viewed border blasters as a loophole, exploiting the lack of international radio agreements, because back then, you know, radio, when it first started, was in its infancy, so they didn't have a lot of this stuff. People never thought about it.

And in 1934, the NARBA treaty and subsequent negotiations forced Mexico to curb some station's power through enforcement, but it was inconsistent. So what was the end result of Mexican radio, other than a couple of songs come out? Well, first off, border blasters were instrumental in spreading music like country music, via artists like the Carter family, and early rock and roll, when Wolfman Jack brought in rock and roll, and Mexican genres like Tejano to U.S. audiences. They gave airtime to marginalized artists shaping the U.S. music landscape.

By broadcasting in English and in Spanish, these stations created a shared cultural space for Mexican-American borderland communities, fostering a bilingual consumer market. And they also generate a lot of money in revenue from advertising. I want to tell you a quick story what happened to me one time.

This wasn't radio, but it was TV, but it was an idea that kind of reflected the power of Mexican radio. I had a little black and white TV back in the day, and it had a UHF channel on it. For those people that didn't know, if you're old enough, you'll know when we had UHF channels.

And one night, I was sitting there listening, and I'm trying to find stations UHF where I live down in South Texas, there wasn't any. But all of a sudden, I started listening, excuse me, watching a TV station out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which was like 700 miles away. And I thought, how did that happen? Well, it was called a weather freak.

And I got to watch that TV station until it got dark, and you know, I lost it because of the weather. But it kind of reminds me of that situation with the Mexican radio stations. You know, when you think about it now, you're thinking, it seems so silly now we have internet, we can listen to radio whenever we want to, we can stream whenever we want to.

But back then, it was a big deal. And that's why these great songs were written about them. And I'd say their legacy is their influence actually changed modern radio and pop culture.

People like Wolfman Jack, well, he was different. That's why we liked him, I think. And also the power of the radio transcend borders and challenged regulatory reforms back then.

So you're probably listening to this going on your pod on my podcast going, I can listen to this anywhere I want to in the world. What's the deal with a radio station that you couldn't hear anywhere except around your local community? Well, one of the reasons, I think a couple reasons that Mexican radio faded out was first off, the regulations that that the FCC worked out with the Mexican government, so they had to crank down those transmitter powers. But that's also the time that TV was coming on and FM radio.

And back then, FM radio started playing rock music. And that's really what changed a lot of it. And of course, now everything's digital.

And you're probably thinking, that's silly. Why did we go through that? Well, it's nostalgic for me. And for a lot of people probably listening to this podcast, remembering when Mexico radio was famous.

And that's where we got all our music, that and from the local AM station that we hoped would play the next favorite Beatles song. Well, that's it for this episode of the Trout Show. Thanks so much for stopping by.

I appreciate it very much. Hope you enjoyed Vinyl to Viral. Special thanks to our continued supporter that keeps our lights on, David Smith with Edward Jones.

And you know, thanks to guys like Wolfman Jack, the Blazed, the Radio Waves. Thanks, Wolfman. Remember what I always say, people.

It's only rock and roll, but I love it. See ya!