Grupo Imagen
| Industry | Mexican media |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1936 |
| Headquarters | Mexico City |
| Products | Radio, television, print and digital media; Querétaro FC |
| Brands | Excélsior, Imagen |
| Owner | Grupo Empresarial Ángeles |
| Website | imagen |
Grupo Imagen is a Mexican media conglomerate, part of Grupo Empresarial Ángeles.
Grupo Imagen traces its roots to the foundation of XEDA-AM in June 1936. This station was acquired by José Luis Fernández Soto in 1962, and in the same year, Fernández Soto founded "Grupo Imagen Comunicación en Radio", which became the operator of XEDA-AM and XEDA-FM. In 1963, Grupo Imagen doubled in size with the acquisition of Radio Metropolitana and its XELA-AM-FM cluster. With these four stations, Grupo Imagen began to form a wide range of programming. While XEDA-FM remained Imagen's flagship with a talk format and XELA-AM continued with its longtime classical music programming, the other two stations changed programming concepts often. In the 1980s, XELA-FM became XHDL-FM "Dial FM", changing formats to rock as "Radioactivo" in the 1990s.
The 1990s also saw the sale of XEDA-AM, then carrying rock music, to Radio S.A., which changed the format to talk. That same year also saw an alliance between MVS Radio and Imagen to operate their Mexico City stations: the group brought together Imagen's XELA-AM, XEDA-FM and XHDL-FM with MVS's XHMVS-FM 102.5 and XHMRD-FM 104.9. When this partnership ended in 2001, Imagen relaunched XEDA with a new news team. In 2002, Imagen dropped XELA's longtime classical format and flipped the station to sports as XEITE-AM (promptly selling it in August of that year), and 2004 saw Imagen drop XHDL's music format for the all-news "Reporte 98.5".
Grupo Imagen was bought by Grupo Empresarial Ángeles, owned by Olegario Vázquez Raña, in 2003 for US $50 million. Under GEA's ownership, Imagen grew into one of the largest media conglomerates in the country: it bought stations nationwide, began distributing its talk programming to interior Mexico, and made a move into television with the acquisition of XHRAE-TV channel 28 Mexico City. XHRAE was rebranded XHTRES "cadenatres". Also in 2006, Imagen bought the Excélsior newspaper for 585 million pesos and refreshed its branding.
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