Exa FM Aguascalientes streams contemporary hits and pop rock to Aguascalientes City on 97.3 FM, part of the national Exa FM network operated by MVS Radio. The frequency itself has been on air since the late 1970s, but it took two rebrands and a change of network partner to become the pop station it is today.
Three Names, One Frequency
XHAGC-FM received its original broadcast concession on September 8, 1978, and went on air as an adult contemporary station branded Sono Imagen, a name it carried for roughly two decades, according to its station history. Everything changed in 1996, when owner Radio Universal formed a partnership with MVS and switched the frequency to MVS's FM Globo format. That relationship deepened further on October 1, 2001, when the station rebranded a second time into the CHR-formatted Exa FM it remains today, broadcasting at 50,000 watts from Aguascalientes.
A City Built on Hot Springs and a Colonial Founding
Aguascalientes was officially founded on October 22, 1575 as the Villa de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de las Aguas Calientes, named for the region's abundance of thermal springs, according to México Desconocido. Spanish colonists established the settlement as a defended waypoint for silver and travelers moving between the mines of Zacatecas and Mexico City, and the mining-era wealth that passed through it left the city center full of quarried stone buildings, including the cathedral built on the site of a chapel that dates back to the year the city was founded.
Home to One of the World's Biggest Fairs
That colonial history eventually produced the Feria Nacional de San Marcos, which started in 1828 as a modest harvest fair before the church's 1842 donation of land created the Jardín de San Marcos park that gives the fair its modern name, according to a report from Mexico News Daily. The fair moved to springtime to coincide with St Mark's Day, grew rapidly once the railway arrived in 1884, and added its Fair Queen tradition in 1920. Today it draws an estimated seven million visitors over roughly three weeks every April, ranking among the ten largest fairs on the planet, a citywide event that a pop station like Exa FM is built to soundtrack.
A Pop Signal for a Fair-Going City
Exa FM Aguascalientes now runs a youth-focused mix of Latin American and international pop under the MVS umbrella, a long way from the adult contemporary format the frequency carried when it first signed on in 1978. But the station's home city has spent nearly two centuries building an identity around a springtime festival that fills every hotel room in town, and a contemporary hits station has an obvious role to play whenever those seven million visitors show up looking for something to dance to.