XEQK-AM
| City | Mexico City |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Greater Mexico City |
| Branding | Tropicalísima 1350 |
| Slogan | El Sonido de la Calle |
| Frequency | 1350 kHz 89.1 MHz HD3 XHCAH-FM |
| First air date | 1938 |
| Format | Tropical music |
| Power | 5 kW day 1 kW night |
| Owner |
Instituto Mexicano de la Radio (Hora Exacta, S.A.) |
| Webcast | XEQK-AM |
| Website | http://www.imer.mx/tropicalisima/ |
XEQK-AM is a radio station in Mexico City. Broadcasting on 1350 kHz, XEQK-AM is owned by the Instituto Mexicano de la Radio through concessionaire Hora Exacta, S.A., and broadcasts a tropical music format under the brand name Tropicalísima 1350.
The concession for XEQK was obtained in 1938 by Ángel H. Ferreira, and the station signed on the next year on 1500 kHz operating 13 hours a day. In its early days XEQK offered a wide variety of programs: news reports from the El Nacional and La Prensa newspapers, radio plays, live musical programming and radio magazines. Medical advertisers were common during this time as well.
Not long after signing on, in 1940, the station hit tough economic times. Ferreira found a way to make the station workable: transmit the time every minute on the minute, interspersed with commercial announcements, from 8am to noon each day. The exact time came from the National Astronomical Observatory, then located in Tacubaya. In an era without digital clocks and only limited telephone services, the format was a success for the station and made significantly more money.
Two years later, XEQK removed all its other programs, moved to its current 1350 AM position and became known as "XEQK, la estación de la hora exacta" (XEQK, the exact time station). It also broadcast the nationalist campaign of president Manuel Ávila Camacho. In 1944, Ferreira sold XEQK to Guillermo Morales Blumenkron, who brought the station to 24-hour broadcasting. That same year, the exact time service was provided from the observatory to the station live, via telephone. Live announcers between the time signals included Jacobo Zabludovsky and Luis Ríos Castañeda, the "distinctive voice" of the station for years. "La QK", as it was popularly known, found a following in places such as hospitals, cars and businesses where exact time was paramount.
The station also pioneered first partial and then full automation, both spearheaded by engineer Gómez Bermúdez. In 1955, the semiautomated system debuted, consisting of eight-minute recordings on disc. The 1963 full automation system involved modules of 12-minute discs controlled by time signals from the observatory, which were sent several seconds before the minute. In 1982, public service messages were added alongside the commercials.
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