XEPRS-AM

XEPRS

City of license	Rosarito Beach
Broadcast area	San Diego-Tijuana
Branding	"XX 1090"
Frequency	1090 (kHz)
First air date	November 6, 1944
Format	Sports
ERP	50,000 watts
Class	A
Callsign meaning	Anagram of EXPReSs. Station was formerly known as "Soul Express."
Affiliations	ESPN Radio
Owner	Broadcast Company of the Americas (license and transmitter owned by a Mexican company)
Sister stations	XHPRS-FM, XEPE, XHITZ, XETRA, XHRM
Webcast	Flash Player, PLS
Website	xx1090sandiego.com

XEPRS-AM, known as XX 1090 (formerly XX Sports Radio), is an American-operated sports talk radio station targeting English-speaking listeners in San Diego. Its signal originates from Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico, and it broadcasts in English out of studios in San Diego. XEPRS is the flagship station of the San Diego Padres^[1] and San Diego Toreros men's basketball. The station also used to air games for the Anaheim Ducks and San Diego State Aztecs Baseball and Basketball. It is the station that was immortalized along with Wolfman Jack in the George Lucas movie American Graffiti.

History

XERB: The Mighty 1090

1090 AM started out as XERB.

In the early 1960s, Robert Weston Smith (a.k.a. Wolfman Jack) was living in Del Rio, Texas and appearing on the "border blaster" AM radio station XERF. After several violent incidents at XERF's transmitter, Smith and partner Marvin Kosofsky (referred to as 'Mo Burton' in Wolfman Jack's autobiography) purchased daytime-only AM station KUXL in 1964 in Minneapolis / St. Paul, Minnesota. Smith relocated to Minnesota and never appeared as Wolfman Jack on KUXL but rather worked as the station's general manager while shipping Wolfman shows on tape to XERF.

In 1965, Smith made an arrangement with the U.S. agent for XERB in Baja California. Smith began selling ad time on the Mighty 1090 and recording Wolfman Jack shows for his new affiliate. Initially, Smith controlled the station's affairs from Minneapolis / St. Paul, Minnesota, and in 1966, Smith, along with fellow KUXL staffers Ralph Hull (a.k.a. Preacher Paul Anthony and The Nazz) and Art Hoehn (a.k.a. Fat Daddy Washington), relocated to Southern California to run XERB full-time.

Wolfman and his associates were able to make the station turn a huge profit by selling programming to radio proselytizers in 15-30 minute blocks. Because they had such a large following and made so much money, the radio evangelists were never too hesitant about paying huge fees for airtime.

As if being on one border blaster wasn't enough, Wolfman began broadcasting pre-recorded shows on three different Mexican stations at different times of the day, XERB, XERF, & XEG 1050 kHz in Monterrey, Nuevo León.

According to his biography, by 1971 Wolfman was making a profit of almost $50,000 a month. The Mexican company executives that leased XERB noticed this and got greedy. They wanted to throw him out and make all the money themselves. So the owners bribed Mexican officials into politically squeezing Wolfman off the air. The Mexican government acquiesed by passing a law that stated there could be no more Pentecostal or religious programming on Mexican airwaves. Since XERB made most of its profits from airtime sold to the prayer-cloth preachers there was no way Wolfman could continue to make payments to the owners each month. “That was it," Wolfman remembered. "In one stroke they cleaned out 80 percent of all the money we were expecting to make." So he and Kosofsky had to turn control of the station back to the Mexican owners.

XEPRS: The Soul Express

With Wolfman out of the way, the station owners tried to duplicate his successful formula. Since Wolfman owned the call letters, XERB, they changed the letters to XEPRS-AM and programmed soul music, calling the station “The Soul Express.”^[2] Wolfman still broadcast for over a year while under the new ownership but left soon afterwards. 15 April 1972 was the last day Wolfman ever held sway over the Mexican border airwaves. Airchecks of that last show are still available online. Taped versions of the Wolfman could be heard on the station around 1980.

In the summer of 1972 George Lucas and crew would film Wolfman on location at station KRE/AM in Berkeley, California, playing himself for the film, American Graffiti. Although the movie shows him broadcasting live from California, the Brinkley Act made this impossible. Artistic license was taken with the subject material for the sake of the script.^[3]

Soon afterwards, the Mexican government repealed their own law and put the preachers back on the air. But, without Wolfman Jack howling over the airwaves, the station never even remotely saw the success that he had achieved.^{[citation needed]}

The call letters XERB have since been assigned to a repeater station for Sol Estereo in Cozumel.

1980s through 2003

XEPRS aired a variety of formats, all of them in Spanish, with one exception. Early in the 1980s, DJ Sean Green^[4] (no known relation to current Major League Baseball player Sean Green or former player Shawn Green), calling the station XPRS (after the name International Record(s) / XPRS incorporated), as Wolfman Jack had, or "1090 Express Radio", hosted a daily oldies show, originally from 7 PM to midnight Pacific Time, in English. The advertisements in that show were invariably for oldies albums that appealed to the Lowrider culture, announced by Dick "Huggy Boy" Hugg.^[5][6]

The last format was salsa, merengue and other forms of Spanish-language tropical music and was called "Radio Caliente." From 2000 to 2002, XEPRS was the radio station of the Anaheim Angels in Spanish, including its championship year of 2002.

The Mighty 1090/XX Sports Radio/XX 1090

With XTRA Sports 690, a Clear Channel-operated radio station based out of San Diego sold to their Los Angeles counterpart in December 2001, several of the on-air talent were released, including Bill Werndl, John Kentera, and others. Filling the void of what would have been a lack of a sports station focusing on San Diego, former head of programming of XTRA Sports 690 John Lynch formed Broadcast Company of the Americas, and launched The Mighty 1090 in March 2003 with most of the on-air talent released from Clear Channel after the sale of XETRA-AM.

Beginning February 1, 2006, XEPRS started simulcasting its sports talk programming on a Mighty 1090 sister station, XHPRS 105.7 (La Pantera) out of Tecate, Baja California. This operation was aimed at bettering the station's signals to Eastern San Diego County and other California listeners. The station then became known as XX (Double X) Sports Radio.

The company responsible for the station's programming and sales, Broadcast Company of the Americas, was founded by John Lynch, a businessman and father of the Denver Broncos defensive back of the same name. Lynch was also once the owner of XETRA, a/k/a "The Mighty 690"; while he was there, he brought Lee Hamilton to San Diego sports radio. Hamilton is now on the XEPRS staff.

The station also includes news updates produced by fellow San Diego television station KUSI, whose owner, Mike McKinnon, and XX Sports Radio owner John Lynch Sr. have a personal relationship.

On April 15, 2008 at 9:00 AM, XX Sports Radio stopped broadcasting programming to 105.7 FM, which became an oldies radio station branded as "105.7 The Walrus." This was the first FM oldies station in San Diego since XHOCL-FM flipped to a Spanish language format on September 1, 2005. As a result of the simulcast's break-up (except for Padres games), XX Sports Radio was renamed XX 1090.

In 2009, the Padres simulcasts moved to XEPE-AM 1700.

On October 6, 2010, XX 1090 became a part-time affiliate of ESPN Radio simulcasting sister station ESPN Radio 1700 in overnights and weekends, dropping the Sporting News Radio affiliation XEPRS held since 2008.

See also

• Border blaster
• American Graffiti
• Wolfman Jack
• XERF-AM
• XHPRS-FM
• XEPE-AM

References

1. ^ "Padres extend contract with XX Sports Radio". press release (Major League Baseball). 2007-02-21. http://mlb.mlb.com/news/press_releases/press_release.jsp?ymd=20070221&content_id=1811125&vkey=pr_sd&fext=.jsp&c_id=sd. Retrieved 2009-05-14. 
2. ^ Fowler, Gene; Crawford, Bill (1987). Border Radio. Texas Monthly Press,. ISBN 0-87719-066-6. 
3. ^ Pullman, Kip. "Wolfman Jack". American Graffiti Page. Archived from the original on 2009-10-26. http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/kippullman&date=2009-10-26+01:23:29. Retrieved 2009-05-14. 
4. ^ Barrett, Don. "LARadio.com, Los Angeles Radio People, G". http://www.laradio.com/whereg.htm. Retrieved 2011-09-13. 
5. ^ "There's More to Clear Channel Than 'The Larry King Show'". Billboard Magazine. 1982-08-14. p. 22. http://books.google.com/books/about/Billboard.html?id=eiQEAAAAMBAJ. Retrieved 2011-09-05. 
6. ^ "XPRS Signs Off Oldies". Billboard Magazine. 1985-02-16. p. 12. http://books.google.com/books/about/Billboard.html?id=pCQEAAAAMBAJ. Retrieved 2011-09-05. 

• Gilder, Eric (2003). Mass Media Moments in the United Kingdom, the USSR and the USA. University of Sibiu Press, Romania. ISBN 973-651-596-6. 

External links

• XX 1090
• XX 1090 on Facebook
• XX 1090 on Twitter
• The Scott and BR Show
• XERB tribute site
• Kip Pullman's American Graffiti Page.