Opening The 1948 freeze on new television station licenses placed by the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States stalled any development of television on the American side of the Río Grande, which was allotted VHF channels 4 and 5. Meanwhile, per international agreement, Matamoros had received the allotments for channels 2, 7, and 11, along with channel 9 in
Reynosa (which also received channel 12 in 1952). Meanwhile, channel 7 in Matamoros was being built out by XESE-TV. XESE was owned by Compañía Mexicana de Televisión, S.A., whose owner, Manuel D. Leal, was vice president and general manager of KIWW radio in
San Antonio. Other partners included Pedro de Lille, W.B. Miller, and Noel Alrich Solano. However, new partners entered into the picture.
Romulo O'Farrill, a television pioneer who signed on Mexico's first television station,
XHTV, in 1950, saw the need for a television station in this market and realized that it could be filled using the Mexican channel 7 allocation. A $300,000 investment was made in facilities and a transmitter tower. The station, under the new call sign XELD-TV, signed on September 15, 1951, from its Mexican transmitter and studio, with a sales office in downtown
Brownsville, Texas. The station was groundbreaking: not only was it the first television station in the state of Tamaulipas (and the third in the nation), it was the first Mexican television
border blaster and the first Mexican station to obtain affiliation with an American network. The station was run much like an American station; it even had an American television representative, Blair TV.
Emilio Azcárraga, owner of
XEW radio and TV in Mexico City, was a half-owner of XELD.
Closure When the FCC freeze was lifted in April 1952, channels 4 and 5 remained in the Brownsville–
Harlingen–
Weslaco area, and prospective station owners in the United States got their chance. In September 1953,
KGBT-TV, licensed to Harlingen, took to the air, taking with it the primary CBS and
NBC affiliations. This began the decline of XELD. By January 1954, O'Farrill had sought and won approval to move channel 7 to
Monterrey or
Guadalajara, both large Mexican markets without television stations at the time. On April 10, 1954,
KRGV-TV signed on from Weslaco, becoming a secondary affiliate of
ABC and primary NBC outlet. Later that month, on April 29, XELD "temporarily suspended" operations; a spokesman cited a devalued
peso and a major breakdown in the station's generator as the main reasons for this move, which included the dismissal of all employees and the closure of the station's offices. Two months after,
Hurricane Alice struck the region and destroyed XELD's facilities, putting a permanent end to the station. However, the station still led to the development of a new television market, with some 18,000 television sets in place. ==References==