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 Entertainment | June 2007 
Mexican Media: Competition and Clowns
 Alejandra Noguez - BBC Mundo
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| | Brozo the Clown gives his own take on the news | 
| | Soap operas are a mainstay of Mexican television |
"Goooal!" The shout reverberates around football fan Antonio Garcia's house as he watches the Sunday match on TV.
"When there's a game on or a soap opera, nobody stirs," he told the BBC.
A big game on TV can bring cities to a halt. It is the same with soap operas, where good always triumphs over evil, or comedy shows full of what Mexicans call "puns" - a play on words with a strong sexual content - often shown before the watershed.
There are also at least 10 programmes a day dedicated to celebrity gossip, cooking or the esoteric.
"Here people really like jokes, light entertainment. As a rule you switch on TV and the first thing you see are cartoons, soaps or football," Ofelia, a student, told the BBC.
A clown as an opinion former, a group of puppets spoofing politicians on TV, and a goblin making editorial comments during a radio news show - all can be found in Mexico.
Satire and political parody have become important sources of news for many people.
"The best thing in TV or radio news are Brozo and the Goblin, because they don't hold back," Sergio Bonilla, who shines shoes in central Mexico City, told the BBC.
Brozo the Clown and the Goblin are personalities who appear in programmes broadcast by Mexican media giant Televisa network to make fun of the national news.
Los Peluches are puppets who try to inject humour into the news show of TV Azteca - the second-biggest channel and which, with Televisa, forms Mexico's media duopoly, controlling 90% of the market.
This duopoly's influence was curbed recently when the Supreme Court overturned legislation known as the Televisa Law. The law had allowed radio and TV stations to offer additional services such as phones and internet without having to apply for a permit and without having to pay the state to make use of the frequency spectrum.
"What the commercial channels, which are in the majority, do is of a low quality," says Alma Rosa Alva, lecturer in political science at Mexico's National Autonomous University (UNAM).
As well as spoofs and satire, the approach to news is to over-dramatise stories, Ms Alva says.
Hector Jimenez, presenter and news director at radio group Monitor, bemoans a lack of critical reporting.
"What we can see on the TV is news that favours the new federal government, so there's not much criticism," he said.
But Mr Jimenez has detected a shift, with news programmes trying to do investigative journalism " in areas that interest their viewers, like public security and immigration".
Traffic news
Radio stations generally offer greater variety and content than TV.
The fashion for radio stations is to have a panel of political experts commenting on the news.
And in big cities like Mexico City, where demonstrations are common and can cause gridlock, traffic news is vital.
That is why some radio stations began a service 10 years ago offering detailed traffic reports, including alternative routes - a service that has proved popular with listeners.
But for deeper coverage of news in Mexico and the wider world, critical analysis and investigations, Mexicans turn to the written press. |
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