City Mexico City Branding Universal 88.1 | Broadcast area Greater Mexico City First air date 1976 | |
Slogan La estación de los clásicos (The Classics Station) Frequency 88.1 MHz (also on HD Radio) | ||
XHRED-FM is a radio station in Mexico City. Located on 88.1 MHz, XHRED-FM is owned by Grupo Radio Centro and broadcasts a classic hits format, airing music in English from the 1960s to the 1990s under the name Universal 88.1.
XHRED-FM broadcasts in HD.
History
Radio Central de México, S.A., the concessionaire of XERED-AM, received a concession to operate a FM radio station in Mexico City in 1972. XHRED-FM launched in 1976, picking up a format previously heard on 1560 AM: "Radio VIP", programming and music in English. In the 1980s, the Spanish-language Monitor newscasts were added, airing simultaneously with XERED-AM. From 1987 to 1994, the station's callsign was changed to XHVIP-FM in reference to its name.
In 1995, Radiodifusora Red—which, by this point, had grown to include XERED-AM, XHRED-FM, and XHRCA-FM 91.3 in Mexico City, as well as Radio Red repeaters in Guadalajara and Monterrey (XEDKR-AM 700 and XESTN-AM 1540)—was sold to Grupo Radio Centro. At this time 88.1 finally adopted the "Radio Red FM" name. The station continued to air the Monitor newscasts, now produced by Gutiérrez Vivó's company Infored, alongside contemporary music in English and a nightly program focused on jazz, which ended in 2001.
For media concentration reasons, Radio Centro sold two stations (1320 AM, which became XENET-AM, and 1560 AM, which became XEINFO-AM) to Infored in 1998, with the stations relaunched in 2000. The two sides had a falling out, which in 2004 resulted in the end of the Monitor newscasts on Radio Red after 30 years. Radio Centro responded by increasing XHRED-FM's effective radiated power to 95 kW and expanding its own news offerings.
In April 2013, the station dropped the "Radio" from its name.
On May 16, 2016, Red FM and Universal 92.1 swapped formats. Despite the name change, the station's callsign remains unchanged, and XERED-AM is still broadcast over its HD radio subchannel. The Universal format was created in 1974 on XEQR-FM.
The station airs a program dedicated to The Beatles twice a day on weekdays, known as "El club de Los Beatles" which has been airing continuously since 1964 (when it began on XERC-AM).