XHLARE-TDT

, virtual channel 18 (UHF digital channel 24), is a MeTV-affiliated television station in, , ; serving across the international border in the. It is owned by Mexican media group and operated by their, -based subsidiary Bay City Television. XHLARE-TDT's advertising sales offices are located on McPherson Road in Laredo; it's technical operations and transmitter are located on Avenida de la República in Nuevo Laredo.

From 1988-2014, XHLARE-TDT had been the affiliate for Laredo, Texas. This position has since been taken over by.

Early years
The concession for channel 18 in Nuevo Laredo was awarded in 1979, receiving the callsign of XHLARE-TV and owned by Radiotelevisora de Laredo, S.A. de C.V., partially owned by the Mexican.

In 1983, Texan oilmen Gene Heywood and Rex Berghammer formed an agreement with Radiotelevisora de Laredo and brought XHLARE-TV to the air on August 17, 1983 as an English language independent station targeting the neighboring U.S. city of and branded as "X-Laredo 18". XHLARE-TV ran a schedule mostly consisting of reruns of older TV shows such as Happy Days and Wonder Woman, as well as children's shows and movies. It produced a popular bilingual Saturday morning children's show titled The Amigos Show. On weekday evenings, the station showed many popular syndicated cartoons of the time such as The Transformers and ThunderCats, as well as other kids' shows such as Kideo TV, Kids Incorporated and British stop-motion series The Herbs.

In 1987, XHLARE-TV affiliated with the freshly re-named and growing U.S. network. The network continued to run English-language syndicated programming in non-network hours. Due to FCC regulations at the time, Telemundo programs were received via microwave and AT&T cable at the station's Laredo offices, where they were reproduced on Betacam tapes and then physically transported to channel 18's transmission facilities in Nuevo Laredo.

As an ABC affiliate
Only a year later on October 31, 1988, the station swapped affiliations with (channel 27) - KLDO-TV became a Telemundo affiliate while XHLARE-TV became an ABC affiliate. Similar to the prior arrangement during it's brief Telemundo affiliation, XHLARE-TV received (via satellite) and recorded ABC programs in Laredo and then "bicycled" the recordings across the U.S.–Mexico border to Nuevo Laredo. Live events (such as Monday Night Football and breaking news coverage) were actually retransmissions of in  or  in ; which were received via a deep fringe VHF antenna that was side-mounted to sister station 's tower. In 1995, the FCC granted a waiver of the rules and allowed ABC to transmit a direct-to-air network feed over C-band satellite to XHLARE; thus XHLARE discontinued the tape bicycling and KIII/KRGV retransmission practices.

In 1996, XHLARE-TV and it's sister station XETV-TV became -owned properties after the Azcárragas transferred the ownership of XETV and XHLARE to their family-run, Mexico City-based multimedia company.

Since 2014
In 2014, announced a full-power station controlled by Televisa in the Laredo, Texas area would become the market's MeTV affiliate. This caused speculation that ABC would be removed from XHLARE in favor of MeTV, although there was no confirmation. On October 26, 2013, the local broadcast of ABC's Litton's Weekend Adventure block was interrupted so that XHLARE could air what they labeled a "señal de prueba" or "test signal" feed of MeTV on 18.1. After numerous unconfirmed rumors that MeTV would be on 18.1, Laredo residents were finally given confirmation on November 6, 2013, when the station's official Twitter feed announced that XHLARE would join MeTV and ABC would move to a digital subchannel of. On July 1, 2014, XHLARE switched to MeTV, ending the station's 26-year affiliation with ABC.

News operation
From 1995-1998, XHLARE-TV broadcast a primetime local newscast at 9:00 p.m. on weekdays produced by.

In 2007, Televisa partnered with the (INN) to produce a weeknight newscast for XHLARE-TV called ABC 18 NewsWatch. The newscasts' in-studio content (news anchors, sports anchors, meteorologists and related personnel) were provided from INN's centralized facilities in, with XHLARE using a team of Laredo-based reporters to provide local content. The original owner of INN filed for bankruptcy in January 2009, leading to production being shifted to San Diego sister station XETV-TV, once again using centralized news anchors, meteorologists and related personnel while still utilizing Laredo-based reporters for local content. In 2014, the newscast was renamed to Laredo NewsWatch.