John R. Brinkley - Brinkley and Radio

Brinkley and Radio

The Mexican government, eager to get even with its northern neighbors for dividing up North America's radio wavelengths without giving any to Mexico, granted Brinkley a 50,000-watt radio license and construction began on XER-AM, his new "border blaster" across the bridge from Del Rio in Villa Acuña, Coahuila (since renamed Ciudad Acuña). As construction got underway, Fishbein and the U.S. State Department desperately searched for a way to shut Brinkley down. Under heavy pressure from the State Department, the Mexican government halted construction on XER-AM, but it was only temporary. Within weeks, construction resumed and soon two 300-foot (91 m) towers reached into the sky. XER, at 840 kilohertz on the AM dial, radiated by a sky wave antenna, made its first broadcast in October 1931. Brinkley called it the "Sunshine Station Between the Nations".

Brinkley used his new border blaster to resume his campaign for governor by using the telephone to call in his broadcasts to the transmitter. This approach did not work, and he lost yet another political campaign; he would lose again in 1934. Though Brinkley's American radio license had been revoked, XER's signal was so strong that it could still be heard in Kansas. In 1932, the Mexican government allowed Brinkley to up his wattage to 150,000 watts. Several months later, Brinkley was allowed to increase to one million watts, "making XER far and away the most powerful radio station on the planet" that, on a clear night, could be heard as far away as Canada. According to accounts of the time, the signal was so strong that it turned on car headlights, made bedsprings hum, and caused broadcasts to bleed into telephone conversations. Local residents didn't even need a radio to hear Brinkley's station; ranchers reported that they received it through their metal fences and in their dental appliances.

Brinkley continued his old radio format of medical advice keyed to advertising products. Male listeners were offered an array of expensive concoctions which included Mercurochrome injections and pills, all designed to help them regain their sexual prowess. At the clinic in the hotel where he lived he also performed prostate operations. He also began selling airtime to other advertisers (at $1,700 an hour, $23,700 in current value), giving rise to new hucksters shilling products such as "Crazy Water Crystals", "genuine simulated" diamonds, life insurance, and an array of religious paraphernalia, including what was purported to be autographed pictures of Jesus Christ. Brinkley also continued packing his radio lineup with up-and-coming country and roots singers whose careers his radio station helped launch (including Patsy Montana, Red Foley, Gene Autry, Jimmie Rodgers, The Carter Family, and others). Del Rio became known as "Hillbilly Hollywood".

When the FRC banned what they called "spooks" (mind readers, fortune-tellers and other mystics) from broadcasting on U.S. radio in 1932, many of them followed Brinkley's model, opening their own border blasters in Mexico. By 1932, 11 such stations had opened, including XENT, XERB, XELO, XEG and XEPN.

Brinkley was still shuttling back and forth from Milford to Del Rio, often broadcasting from XER over the telephone. But in 1932, Congress passed a law outlawing this practice, known as the Brinkley Act. Unfazed, Brinkley began using some of the first "electrical transcriptions" — what today would be called pre-recordings — to circumvent the law. Around this time, Brinkley decided to sever the rest of his ties to Kansas, closing down his hospital there and opening a new one in Del Rio, which took up three floors of the Roswell Hotel, where he lived with his wife.

In 1934, Mexico revoked Brinkley's broadcast license, the result of pressure from the United States. Soldiers from the Mexican army arrived at the station's doorstep to shut him down, and for a time he had to broadcast from nearby XEPN, located in Piedras Negras, Coahuila.

Though Brinkley continued to perform the occasional goat gland transplant, in Texas his practice shifted mostly to performing slightly modified vasectomies and prostate "rejuvenations" (for which he charged up to $1,000 per operation ($17,000 in current value), and prescribed his own proprietary medicine for after-care). His business, fueled by radio advertisements and speeches, continued to thrive, and he opened another clinic in San Juan, Texas specializing in the colon. By 1936, Brinkley had amassed enough wealth to build a mansion for himself and his wife on 16 acres (6.5 ha) of land. Brinkley boasted a stable of a dozen Cadillacs, a greenhouse, a foaming fountain garden surrounded by 8,000 bushes, exotic animals imported from the Galapagos Islands, and a swimming pool with a 10-foot (3.0 m) diving tower. Brinkley continued living high in Del Rio, until in 1938 a rival doctor began cutting into Brinkley's business by offering similar procedures much more cheaply. When Del Rio's city elders refused to put the competitor out of business, Brinkley closed up shop and reopened in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas with another hospital at what is now Marylake Monastery. His competition from Del Rio opened a new cancer center in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, about 150 miles (240 km) northwest of Little Rock.