XHRIO-TV

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XHRIO-TV
Brownsville / McAllen, Texas
City of license	Matamoros, Tamaulipas
Branding	Fox XRIO 2 My 2 (for MNTV programs)
Channels	2 (VHF) analog, no digital
Affiliations	Fox My Network TV (secondary) MTV Tr3s (secondary)
Owner	Entravision (license and transmitter owned by a Mexican company)
Founded
Former callsigns	XHHUPN (late-1990s to 2005) (was XHRIO prior to the late-1990s)
Former affiliations	Spanish independent (prior to late-1980s) Telemundo (late-1980s to early-1990s) UPN (late 1990s-2005)
Website	myfoxrio.com

XHRIO, channel 2, is the local Fox affiliate for Brownsville and the Lower Rio Grande Valley. It is licensed to Matamoros, Mexico, but serves American audiences across the Rio Grande from its studios in McAllen, Texas. Known as Fox XRIO 2, XHRIO is one of two Fox affiliates that broadcast from Mexico (San Diego / Tijuana's XETV-TV is the other).

XHRIO carries the full Fox schedule, along with My Network TV programming nightly at 10PM, and MTV Tr3s during late-night and early morning hours (generally 1AM to 9AM). On March 12, 2007, XHRIO debuted it's new newscast "Fox 2 News at Nine". The 30 minute newscast airs Monday through Friday at 9 p.m.

The station was previously-known as XHHUPN, when they had the UPN affiliation. Prior to the late-1990s, they had the XHRIO calls and programming in Spanish, first as a local channel for Matamoros viewers, later as a Telemundo affiliate.

Previously, Fox programming was seen on XHFOX channel 17, but, in the early-2000s, station owner Televisa dumped the Fox affiliation and flipped that channel to a XEW-TV repeater. Prior to XHFOX's arrival and before XHRIO became Fox, Lower Rio Grande viewers on the American side got their Fox programming from the nationwide Foxnet channel.

Like its sister Fox affiliate in San Diego, XHRIO is operated by Entravision (through its Bay City Television subsidiary) under a local marketing agreement. Mexican law does not allow foreigners to own any media outlets.

[edit] Carriage issues

Because XHRIO is licensed and broadcasting from Mexico, it is not covered under US "must-carry" regulations from the FCC. This means that, apart from low-powered affiliates in the US, XETV and XHRIO are the only Fox affiliates that local cable systems are not required to carry. However, US cable systems are effectively required to carry them anyway, since these stations are operated by Entravision, which owns stations on the American side of the border—the same must-carry rules give full-powered American stations the option of "retransmission consent", or requesting compensation from cable systems to carry their station. In this case, KNVO, an Entravision-owned Univision affiliate in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, can require cable systems to offer XHRIO on their systems as part of the compensation for carrying KNVO.

On September 27, 2006, DirecTV added XHRIO to its lineup in the Rio Grande Valley market; prior to that date, DirecTV viewers in that market received Fox programming from Corpus Christi's K47DF.

[edit] External links

• Official website