CDMX radio had more than 100 million listeners in the year of its centenary

Radio from Mexico City reached more than hundred million people in the accumulated from January to October 2022, and the monthly average number of radio listeners achieved by this means of communication during those ten months of the year was 10.09 million listeners.

The data is quite a mark for the dean of electronic media that in CDMX celebrates a century of transmissions this year, and in financial terms it also translates as an increase of 93.81% in the contracting of spots on AM/FM of the capital and to the joy of broadcasting concessionaires, who heard a collapse in their income in the year of the pandemic. Hiring then went from the 133,535 spaces that advertisers hired in January, to the 258,808 commercials that they paid for in November. In those eleven months, the sector then listened to the transmission of 2 million 59,792 spots here.

the house of measurements INRA revealed that from January to October, the radio station of the Valley of Mexico had a combined audience of 103 million 685,916 people reached among all the radio, commercial and public groups, and that there are also seven radio broadcasting groups that compete for the bulk of the audience : six from commercial radio and only one from public radio; and in addition, all of them also with a national reach and with pilot stations of national chains.

Radio at the Mexico level sets its first transmission in Monterrey on September 9, 1921, but the first recognized transmissions in the capital occurred in 1922 and in that year the National Radio League, the first radio association, was also formalized in this city. that the country knew, and at the same time manufacturers began to sell radio receivers here. It would not be until 1929 that the Mexican radio stations would begin to transmit with the initials “XE”.

A century later, the capital’s radio continues to ring with 72 stations covering its entire territory and beyond the states of Mexico and Hidalgo, and some proximities of Puebla and Morelos. Of all of them, 63 stations have their origin in CDMX, although several of these frequencies are now owned or leased by third-party regional broadcasting groups that landed in the capital due to the opportunity that the recent sale of non-strategic assets by the historical national broadcasting groups.

Radio Center Group, ACIR Group, Radiopolis, NRM Communications, MVS Communications, Radio Formula Group and the Mexican Radio Institute (Imer) were, in that order, the most listened to radio broadcasters in the capital in the period January-October 2022, with 22.08 million people reached in those ten months the first and with 5.47 million people reached the last. But those are gross data in terms of volume, because in the net measurements by audience segments, time slots and by type of programming the numbers change.

As an example, MVS Comunicaciones thus occupied the fourth position among the most listened to at the radio group level in those months. However, your stationthe best fm” was consolidated in 2022 as the most listened to group music and entertainment station in the city, now surpassing “Ke-Buena” from Radiopolis, because it had previously surpassed “La Z” from Radio Centro. La Mejor had in the reference period of ten months, a total of 6.94 million listeners; La Ke-Buena, 6.16 million listeners, and La Z, another 5.12 million listeners. From January to October, La Mejor was the station with the highest number of listeners in Mexico City.

In talk radio and news, Radiópolis and Radio Fórmula fight for first place in the capital, through “In Radio” y “Formula 104.1 FM”. The first of those two stations had 4.4 million listeners between January and October; and the second, 4.2 million listeners in the same period. The third most listened to station by the audience in the segment is “Fórmula 103.3 FM”, with 3.15 million listeners. The Radio Formula Group is by itself the leader of spoken radio in the city in all its stations as a whole, with 11.92 million radio listeners from January to October and among its AM/FM stations.

The musical radio in Spanish for contemporary adults was led in the period by “Stereo Joya” of Grupo Radio Centro for its 6.14 million people reached. This station was followed by “Amor” by Grupo ACIR, with 5.9 million listeners, and further behind was “Oye” by NRM Comunicaciones, with 4.1 million people reached.

In music and entertainment radio for younger audiences, the leadership was from the station “Los 40” from Radiopolis, with 6.05 million listeners, followed by “EXA” from MVS, with 5.9 million listeners and a third place was “Alfa 91.3” from Radio Centro with its 5.7 million listeners.

The historical onesUniversal Stereo” and “Stereo Cien”, with more than forty years in the public’s taste each, had 3.6 and 2.7 million radio listeners in the period.

Among the innovations presented by the INRA firm, it is worth noting that XHINFO-FM, whose case rang during the year due to an operation control problem, had a total of 880,000 listeners in those ten months, with a downward trend in the last weeks.

In the descent he was also “FM Education Radio”. That public radio station had some 71,736 listeners in January and in October the number decreased to 26,270 people. This mark is an alert for the station’s management, because the 26,270 listeners of October 2022 for Radio Educación FM mean a lower level than the 28,358 listeners that its sister “Radio Educación AM” had in December 2018 and also occurs in a regulatory technical context in which the Federal Institute of Telecommunications (IFT) enabled the FM of Radio Educación to have a greater transmission range so that it could reach more people.

Among public radio, the station of the Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA) remains with a captive audience, since “Ibero 90.9” touched 800,000 listeners between January and October, a quota similar to that achieved by “W Deportes” from Radiópolis in commercial radio and double what was achieved by “Romántica 1380”, also a commercial radio but owned by Radiorama. Above all of them were the two stations of “Radio UNAM”, which together reached 1.73 million people in the capital.

The best month between January and October for the capital radio was July in the year of its centenary, with a total of 11.45 million that combined all the AM/FM stations, confirming a recovery trend observed in 2021, when the radio of the Mexico City managed to add 7 million listeners to its audience shares.

“Radio continues to be a very important medium for information and entertainment, and this explains why it maintains a captive audience. The radio has also been able to adapt to technological changes, because based on the most recent IFT audiovisual content consumption survey, 20% of those who listen to the radio do so through their cell phone and 10% using smart speakers. This means that a third of that captive radio audience is already listening to content using new devices and, from what can be inferred, more and more on the Internet. There is an important evolution in this area a century away,” said Gabriel Sosa Plata, radio broadcasting researcher.

“Another element to consider is that CDMX radio has increased its offer, with new community stations, which have come to refresh the content, to offer something different to their audiences, such as Violeta Radio, or university radios, such as UAM Radio or Radio IPN, which has renewed its programming, compared to a commercial radio station that continues to be very strong, but without major innovations in its formats or in journalistic productions, that recover the social agenda or the political changes that Mexico has experienced in recent years ” said Sosa Plata.