When I was a kid, I had a family friend who went to what was then North Texas State University. He worked for a while at the university's campus radio station, KNTU. While he was there, the university's name changed to "University of North Texas", and there was a running joke for a while about whether the powers that be would unthinkingly try to adjust the station's call letters to reflect the new name. (They didn't. It's still KNTU.)
And for good reason: I don't think the FCC would even allow it. In Canada, where call letters start with C, they especially wouldn't allow it at all since it spells arguably the most potent swear word in the English language and the worst thing to call a woman, no matter how unpleasant she may be, so it stands to reason why the University of North Texas kept the call letters of their campus radio station as KNTU instead of - shall we say, the Voldemort of radio call letters. Notwithstanding the FCC and CRTC not allowing profanity in their radio call letters, in my hometown, the University of Utah has a campus radio station under the call letters of KUTE, but it was always plagued by financial troubles, which is why, despite efforts to add a low-power FM signal in addition to their former AM signal at 1620 kHz, they were never able to expand. Now, I think the only way to listen to it is online.
@@scratchpad7954 I did _say_ it was a running joke. I don't think anyone there was dim enough to think there was ever a genuine possibility of it happening. :)
Some of the other weird exceptions include KMOX-it's studio and transmitter were originally west of the Mississippi, but eventually the transmitter was moved to Illinois across the river, while the studios remained in the West! Also WWVB is our time broadcast service, which used to be in Washington, DC, but moved over to Colorado!
There at least three radio/TV stations with"W"call letters in Texas. WOAI Radio and TV in San Antonio. WFAA in Dallas/Fort Worth and WBAP Radio in Dallas/Fort Worth. PlusKDKA is a Spanish language in the DFW Area.
The WMYB radio station you're showing was in my hometown Myrtle Beach, South Carolina USA. We were and still are a popular seaside resort. At the time of this photo, we had a population of maybe 4,000 people. WMYB consisted of two announcers and an engineer who also served on air. They were a classic, all purpose local station playing popular AM songs with lots of local news and programming... something for everyone! Eventually the station was overwhelmed by the mega FM outfits and had to shut down and was razed. A very respected Orthodox Jewish school sits there now. However, there are many of us local seniors who remember our beloved WMYB. Thanks for reviving a great memory!
I recall an American TV show back in the early 80's called "WKRP in Cincinnati" which was an introduction for us Brits into radio stations in the USA, I loved the 4 letter naming convention, it seemed so exotic compared to our British radio station names.
I used to watch that show when I was little and loved it. Later when I met people from Cincinnati I was dismayed to find that the station was entirely fictional. I mean, having that call sign is marketing gold!
TLDW: 🇰 vs. 🇼. BTW, the reason for K and W goes all the way back to Morse code. The US originally wanted all the A and N callsigns for its Army and Navy, respectively. And if you put an extra dah onto the Morse code representations of A and N, you get W and K respectively.
Don't know if its coincidence or planned, but 'K' and 'W' are not part of the Spanish alphabet (they are used in foreign words only) so were unlikely to cause confusion with potential Mexican radio stations (I do not know when Mexico formalized their station IDs)
Two of the earliest commercial AM stations in the USA are both in Pittsburgh PA, east of the Mississippi. KDKA you detailed ... KQV conforms to the "KQ" rule but is just three letters. KQV went on air in 1919; it was a top-40 station (second in ratings behind KDKA) during my youth in Pittsburgh (1950s-60s), went all-news in the 1980s, and after some ownership changes is still on air at 1410 on the AM dial.
It's not a commercial broadcast station but the highest-profile W-station-in-K-land is likely WWV, originally from Maryland but kept their call when they moved to Colorado.
😅KHB-36, NOAA weather radio, is located in Manassas, Virginia and is on a television antenna tower. I was a technician at that station. From my house I can receive NOAA stations from Hagerstown, Baltimore, DC, Manassas and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Great story on the call signs. Oh, one interesting call signs is 1410 AM KQV in Pittsburgh, PA, receivable at my QTH though only 5KW. Keep up the good work and good listening.
All this time I was under the impression that the "W" stations used a Westinghouse broadcasting standard, while the "K" stations used a Kaiser broadcasting standard. I was told that when I was a wee lad, so perhaps I misinterpreted it. Thanks for educating an old American.
WIBW in Topeka, KS actually got it's callsign due to, in 1925, originally being licensed to Logansport, Indiana. The radio station was converted to a portable radio station in 1926 & was moved to Joplin, MO. In May 1927, the radio station moved, one more time, to Topeka, Kansas where it is today. In 1927, what is now the FCC decided to no longer accept applications for portable radio stations & those that were in operation would have to, by July 1, 1928, find a permanent home or go off the air permanently.
Dear Ringway, this I actually knew beforhand but you had some great graphics in this presentation. When radio stations looked like radio stations and men wore hats and smoked pipes. All the best.
As a Hartford, Connecticut native... I cried a bit seeing the WCCC/Bond Hotel cards. Two iconic things that don't exist- The Bond being converted, and WCCC being taken over by Christian Radio. You should do a video on clear channels- like WTIC AM 1080 and it's CW "V" tone.
I would love to hear about the so called Clear Channel stations, their purpose and if they still operate today. Also, the pirate "Border Blaster" (100KW+) stations that used to operate along the Mexican border from the 1940's to the 1970s.
A Clear Channel license is the Holy Grail of broadcasting. Due to how medium-wave (where the AM broadcast band is located) propagation works*, signals are relatively local during the day but can travel for thousands of miles at night. Since there are only so many frequencies available, the FCC allocated identical frequencies to stations that were distant enough that they would not interfere during daylight hours. These stations, between sunset and sunrise, were required to reduce power, change their radiation pattern, or even go off the air. A Clear Channel frequency is one that is not doubled, so the holders of a CC allocation could transmit at full power around the clock. I don't know the exact requirements to qualify for a CC license, but I imagine it involved a rather hefty application fee. I also don't know if any more CC licenses are being granted but the holders of existing CC licenses continue to enjoy them and, I imagine, guard them jealously. *It involves the D, E, and F layers of the ionosphere. I will not go into it here.
@@rogerb5615 -- Yes, indeed! The Wolfman was our constant companion, growing up in California -- blasting out nightly on "The Mighty Ten-Ninety, X-E-R-B, over Los Angeles" -- and everywhere else with a radio or sensitive dental fillings, no doubt.
The clear channel (not Clear Channel, the company) stations are spaced at regular intervals on the AM broadcast band and are allowed to use high power at night. To "step on" some of the clear channel stations, some enterprising radio station owners set up "Mexican Flamethrower" stations, just across the border with ludicrous amounts of wattage.
The last three-letter broadcast call from the FRC was WIS, Columbia, SC. ("Wonderful Iodine State") Station is still around as TV. The AM was sold by Cosmos back in the 1980's and has been WVOC. ("We're the Voice Of Columbia") There was an attempt at a "next-gen" version of "WIS Radio" as WISW, but it died big-time. There have been some prefix flips. KBTV, channel 8 in Dallas became WFAA-TV. The 1965 switch of KYW from Cleveland back to Philadelphia was because of the FCC having a hissy-fit over the original agreement between Westinghouse and NBC. NBC did eventually land in Philly when Group W (The old Westinghouse Broadcasting) bought CBS, and flipped KYW-TV from NBC-TV to CBS TV and sold CBS O&O WCAU-TV to NBC, creating "NBC 10" Regarding WWV, there's a parody of what WWV could sound like if NIST were to LMA it to iHeart or such.. Look for "WWV The Tick"...
Here in the U.S., airports have their “call sign” identification included on the National Weather Service page for that location; using the 3-digit identification code preceded with the “K” sign. For example, Los Angeles International has a call-sign KLAX; Washington National Airport, KDCA; Atlanta H-J, KATL. (Great old station advertising/photos!!)
Wow, you did some serious research! 5:34 A Blaw-Knox tower. WSM Nashville still has one, and it’s gorgeous! 6:02 Delaware had no UHF TV and asked the FCC for it. I didn’t know one moved from Wyoming!
Neither New Jersey nor Delaware commercial VHF TV. Congress mandated that any commercial VHF TV station moving to a state without one would get an automatic 10-year license renewal from the FCC. That's how WOR-TV New York became WWOR-TV Secaucus. That was back when licensee RKO General was in a world of hurt with the FCC. The stipulation on commercial was that both NJ and DE had non-commercial stations. WNET Newark and WHYY Wilmington.
I grew up in range of KYW in Philadelphia, 1060 kHz AM. When I pass through the area I will still tune in to get news and weather, etc., and the station ID is kind of nostalgic. Back in the 70s and 80s they used to constantly broadcast the sound of a teletype machine in the background during news segments, so it always sounded like they were getting news fresh off the wire. It was a gimmick, but it was cool. I don't think they do that anymore, especially since no one knows what a teletype machine is these days. I'm also glad you mentioned TV stations. We don't think of them as "radio stations", but of course TV is just a fancy form of radio communication.
KWAM was located in & apparently originally licensed to West Memphis AR in the 1940's but in the '50s was allowed to move their studios to Memphis TN but left the transmitter in AR. Their TX is in the flood plane of the mighty Mississippi river just off the western end of the I-55 bridge. I have never seen documentation of what would be a modern change of "City of License".
Hey we like our Sports KRAP radio! Well, I assume I would if I cared about sports. I still love seeing the station though, which isn't actually shown here. Looks like you've got someone's house; possibly an owner. The actual station is in what is basically one of those container-sized temporary house things they put on construction sites, and it sits on the lip of a sinkhole that opened up in 1993 during the flood.
@@RCAvhstape Lol, I wish I could post a photo in the comments. There's a big man-made berm of maybe 8-10 feet high around the sinkhole, and the station is on the outside of that berm maybe halfway up. You haven't been able to see the sinkhole itself from the highway in a couple of decades now. That berm isn't going to save anything if the sinkhole opens up wider of course, but I guess hiding it makes people feel better. I might have to go try and get a drone photo of it, even if I can't share it here.
Thanks for a fun video. As an American, i was familiar with most of this checkered history -- but i loved the wonderful old graphics and your precise attention to detailed exceptions to the rules. One thing i have always liked about our stations is the way that call-signs became slogans: WGN -- "World's Grated Newspaper " -- comes to mind; it was owned by the Chicago Tribune. Also some choices are cryptic but fun, like KQED -- Q.E.D. (quod erat demonstrandum) -- it was originally an educational station.
WLS stood for "world's largest store" as it was owned by Sears, Roebuck & Co. WCFL was owned by the Chicago Federation of Labor, as exemplified by their station ID announcements: "You're listening to the Voice of Labor, WCFL, Chicago."
I've never quite understood why Broadcast stations needed Callsigns as such - probably the Uk'ism in me where stations effectively call themselves what they want.
I had known about KDKA. But i didn't know that KYW was originally a midwest radio station. At night KYW can easily be received in central Pennsylvania where i live. Thanks for a interesting video.
As someone born, raised in, and continuing to reside in Western Washington State, KVI-AM - with studios in Seattle and heard throughout much of the Puget Sound region - has been around since the mid-late 1920s. Aside from KJR-AM/FM (also in Seattle), it's one of the few remaining examples of the three-letter call sign stations in my part of the PNW (KMO and KOL were also present, but either changed call signs or ceased broadcasting before I was born). The "VI" in KVI actually stands for Vashon Island, which is where the station's transmitter tower has been located, nearly from the beginning (mid-1930s), on the eponymously named "KVI Beach". Whilst I can't see much of Vashon itself, I can see a good part of its smaller "conjoined" companion (Maury Island) on its eastern side from several locations within walking distance of where I live, within the greater Seattle-Tacoma area. I appreciated your delving into the history of the naming conventions for our stations over here in the US. Although I was familiar with a good portion of it already, you introduced some other interesting information that I had not been aware of, so in addition to seeing some nice vintage station promotional literature, it was well worth watching!
There are other three-letter callsigns in use in Washington State: KIT in Yakima, KPQ in Wenatchee, KUJ in Walla Walla, and the television callsign of KHQ in Spokane.
@@denelson83 Well, as I said, I'm only speaking from what I may know as a web-footed mossback on this side of the Cascades. Even though I have had various relatives who have lived in all parts of WA, the Eastern half still may as well be an alien planet in a completely different galaxy. 😆 I haven't ventured over there for any length of time in over 35 years, when I was a young teenager.
i live in a small town in the middle of england. i've never met an american but it has long been one of those uber-trivial questions you never think you'll have answered but i've always wondered why american radio stations are w-k. i'm sure i could have looked harder but i settled on it being one of those things i'd never know. so thank you ringway. 😃
Also, WWV - the government's clock on 10, 15, & 20 MHz is in Colorado (K territory), although it was originally in Maryland (W territory). This also doesn't apply to ham calls.
I hear KISS 92.5 here in Toronto all the time. I assume it's a Buffalo NY station. I'll now have to take a look at why they have a K call. Thanks for the interesting video Lewis! 73 VE3GKT Edit: it's CKIS-FM. So it's a station in Toronto that I made a bad guess about. Lol.
Stateside, we do have "KISS" stations all across the country, and they usually request a call sign with the letters K and S included, so we end up with bizarre attempts to shoehorn the brand in there, like WVKS in Toledo, WNKS in Charlotte, KHKS in Dallas, or KBKS in Seattle. Interestingly, as much as the biggest radio companies in the country have tried to make that a Top 40 brand, I grew up in Miami with one of the rare non-Top 40 examples, the country station WKIS.
Here in Iowa we have WOC in Davenport and WHO in Des Moines but owned by D. Palmer. BTW all of Minnesota is considered west of the River. KSTT in Davenport has their transmitter in Illinois. WHBF-4 Rock Island IL has their transmitter in Iowa. WVIK-90.3 Rock Island IL also has their's in Iowa.
As a Minnesotan, I had to see how true this was! lol KDWB (101.3) and KQQL ("KOOL 108" [107.9]) run from the same building and are indeed on the western side of the river. But... 93-X (KXXR; 93.7) is actually EAST of the Mississippi River. Checking their wiki page and everything post-1988 on that frequency have had *_K_* callsigns (1960-88 was WAYL). HOWEVER, I'm not about to check whether or not their stations physical location had *always* been on the eastern side of the river! 😅 So it's possible at some point, they had moved and just kept the K prefix. They are, after all, under a mile from the river, so it could've been a matter of _"meh, we'll allow it..."_ 😊
King was owned by the king family king tv channel 5 king am 1090 the signal was poor at night in South sound Tacoma area if away from the sound the LA station walked over it at night and king fm classical
Very good, as an American, about our FCC call letter system, which also applies to our Amateur Radio calls. Yes, our NOAA Weather frequencies use a system like the call signs for our GMRS and was with CB until the 1980's. I started to DX AM on a portable in 1960, when starting High School, then Shortwave with a Hallicrafters SX-110 in 1961, purchased at an original Radio Shack store, and to today, in 1962, amateur radio. 😊
@igmusicandflying Yes I know being licensed since 1962, first as a Novice as WV2ZPD, then as Tech as WA2ZPD, I obtained my General Class at the FCC still, my Advanced in 1994, and Extra in 1995. In 1997 I obtained my vanity call, W2CH. Around 1978 the N and KA calls started. I think around 1995, when I upgraded to Extra it would have defaulted to AA2ZZ or AB2AA, if I did not retain WA2ZPD until the chosen vanity call.
I still have a fully-functional Hallicrafters S-38E that was my father's that I sometimes turn on for nostalgia's sake. Both of us used it for SWL before getting our ham tickets.
I live ni the US and thought I knew everything about th K and W allocations. but I learned quite a bit., thanks to your meticulous research/ Congratulations on a stellar video!
Great video. As to the A and N prefixes, both are used for Amateur Radio call signs. Civil Air Patrol is the auxiliary of the Air Force. Up until some time ago, their radios were under the control of the FCC and had FCC issued licenses. They now are under the control of a different government agency. It is the one that controls all of the military radio systems. I do not know what type of call signs the military are now using.
That’s the same N in aircraft registrations. When they decided radio was going to be the way planes communicated they aligned radio callsigns and aircraft registrations.
Echoing @billschlafer -- i would love you to do an overview of the Border Blasters -- beginning with the infamous Goat Gland Doctor and the fabulous Carter Family on million watt XER across from Del Rio, Texas, and continuing through the decades to XERF, XERA, and the culminating glory of Wolfman Jack on XERB, The Mighty 1090, "Over Los Angeles." North American radio has never been the same since those days. (There are some great old XERB callsign announcements on a You Tube channel called Airchecks by Radiomania, if you are interested -- and nothing beats the Wolfman's sing-alongs on the slow numbers.)
Yes, it can be weird living on the boundary between the K and W regions. I lived in Minneapolis for a quarter of a century, and while most of the local stations, like KARE, KMSP and KSTP, followed the convention for the K region, the oldest and most well-established station, a CBS owned-and-operated AM, FM and TV complex, has retained the call letters WCCO. As near as I can tell, *all* of the various studios for these stations lie on the west side of the Mississippi, but the transmitters vary. So, yeah, you just end up accepting the various call letters and stop thinking too much about it, lol.
There are other notable stations that use the letter opposite their region. KYW - Philadelphia PA WFAA, WBAP - Dallas/Fort Worth TX That's all off the top of my head.
In fact, the FCC allows new broadcast stations in Minnesota and Louisiana to pick between K and W for their callsigns' first letter, precisely because the Mississippi River goes through the interiors of those states. Around 1987, the custom was to extend the K/W dividing line north from Lake Itasca to the point where the Koochiching-Saint Louis county line meets the Canada-US border, but this is no longer the practice.
And in 🇨🇦 we have C as a prefix like C-FUN and C-JAZ. CiSL 650 was nicknamed Senile 650 as they played 40s music until their audience, well lived up to the moniker...
Interesting some of the acronyms they come up with for the call letters. Here the letters after the k is often an abbreviation of the name of the town the station is licensed in. Not all are that way but my oldest and thus probably first stations in their areas are.
There were a number of "vanity" callsigns issued. Off the top of my head: WPLJ in New York for a song called "White Port and Lemon Juice", which later was "backronymed" as "peace, love, and joy". Corporate callsigns were common: WABC, WNBC, WCBS, and their western counterparts. These were very common amongst low-powered college radio stations: WLVR at Behlehem University in Bethlehem PA for "Lehigh Valley Radio", WXPN for University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, WFUV for Fordham University in The Bronx, etc. Some of them were "bacronyms" applied to randomly-issued callsigns later. WIP was "Wireless in Philadelphia".
There are some exceptions for stations near the Mississippi. I grew up in a town on the east bank of the river with an AM and FM station both beginning with K. This may be because the line between K and W call signs does not follow the exact path of the river, especially in northern Minnesota were I lived. In that region the river is not very wide and is filled with twists and turns and loops back on itself in places where the river channel has changed over the past 100-150 years.
As someone has already mentioned WKRP in Cincinnati I shall mention a different one that made it onto our screens KRE Radio 1400AM 102.9FM the internal scenes was shot at Aquatic Park in Berkeley, the scene showing the outside of the building was KTOB Radio station in Petaluma California, the DJ also in real life worked KDAY in LA and WNBC in New York.
I was surprised and delighted to see WMYB Myrtle Beach, SC in your presentation. I wrote the station in 1975 requesting technical details. I was a young high school student and radio enthusiast then and frequently vacationed in Myrtle Beach with my parents and grandparents. I received a friendly and informative reply from the station engineer and I still have that letter to this day.
I was interested in radio as a child but I wasn’t so much of an enthusiast that I noticed the K stations in the eastern United States and the W stations in the western. My big local station chose WSOY because at the time, Decatur, Illinois styled itself the Soybean Capital of the World. There was even a Soy Capital Bank (I don’t know if they’re still using that name since they were bought out).
I knew a radio station with the call sign “KOUT” in South Dakota. Sounds like”Coyote” right? They called themselves “Kat cOUnTry”…. Because that makes sense.
Coast and commercial (non-broadcast) stations of the early days followed the convention of K on the west and W on the east. My thought is that it was done this way to be able to tell the difference between coast and ship stations. Some of the early AM broadcast stations started as commercial (non-broadcast) stations. The use of W, K, N and A was a good choice by the US in the early days due to how they are sent in morse code.
As he explains, N was originally Navy and A army, but yes I suspect the choice of W and K was something to do with morse. Dah-dit-Dah for K is a very distinctive morse sound.
5:26 I never knew that call sign for that station. For the time i lived in the area it was WEJL (initials of an owner of the Scranton Times who turned it from a struggle newspaper to a major one for the city.)
Im in Minnesota! We have an equal number of stations with K's and W's cause the Mississippi runs through the state instead of on the border. Funny enough, WCCO broadcasts from Minneapolis on the West side of the River, and KMSP is on the East side in St. Paul. Our local NPR news station has a pretty cool callsign too, KNOW. And sure enough, they're east of the Mississippi in St. Paul.
Do you guys in Europe ever hear our big(ger) AM Clear Channel stations St night over there? What about the occasional Lowry VHF Skip of our FM band? Also you East Coast enthusiasts, do you ever hear European stations not on the SW bands? I am in Utah so DX for me usually is Mexico or Canada and or FM is too saturated in this area for any fun there.
FM is too saturated everywhere now thanks to the bible bangers and all the translator stations they filed for. before the translator invasion I would dx all kinds of stuff on FM from here in Indiana picked up stations at times from 1,000 miles away. can't do that anymore cause EMF Klove crap is on every other frequency.
It used to be the same with marine coast stations. Amagansett/WSL, Chatham/WCC and the small but mighty Slidell/WNU on the Atlantic coast. San Fran/KPH, San Fran/KFS and the unfortunately callsigned Los Angeles/KOK on the Pacific coast. There were many others but they were the big beasts back in the day when morse was king of the marine airwaves.
My favourite US radio station was "THE AMERICAN SPOYTS NETWORK W.A.N.K. CINCINATTI" which used to feature occasionally on Mark and Lard's afternoon show on Radio 1. I wonder what happened to them? 😁😁
I find it amazing that people STILL watch TV or listen to radio at the end of 2023. OTA radio is nothing but commercials punctuated by the same old top 40, tooth saxophone jazz, or symphonic classical, religious and hate filled talk radio on the AM band. TV is just as bad with endless commercials punctuated by some awful television programming and this applies not only to OTA TV but cable/satellite. One of the reasons why I sold a classic and restored Marantz 10B FM tuner a few years ago.
I'm glad you cleared this up for me. I've known about the Mississippi divide for eastern W stations and western K stations but never understood why there were some exceptions.
I worked at 1400 WLLH in the early 1990s! I’m surprised & thrilled to see a mention in your video. They have a duel synchronic antenna system, with towers in Lowell & Lawrence (MA).
Yes and no. I believe amateur radio WAS constrained to the Mississippi divide at one point in time, but it's not anymore. The FCC is more concerned with license classes and the multiple regions of the country that they've drawn up for amateur radio purposes. The modern geographical representation for ham call signs is a numeral immediately following the prefix, followed by sequentially-assigned letters. I live in Michigan, which is in Region 8, so for example, if I got a brand new Novice-class license today, it could be either W8GHI or K8JKL. What matters to the FCC in terms of location is that number 8. However, if I were to move across the country to, say, Colorado (which is region 10), I would get to KEEP my existing callsign, it wouldn't be changed just because I moved to a different region. It only matters where I first applied and was granted the license. If I applied for a new license AFTER the move, then the call letters for THAT license would be either W10GHI or K10JKL. But if I'm retaining or even just upgrading my existing license from BEFORE the move, then it would still remain a region 8 callsign. The FCC is weird like that. It's what happens when you let corporate lackeys take control of a communications regulatory agency instead of engineers who actually know what they're doing. Not that I have opinions about such things 😉
I just realised WCTR on GTA V would have been one of those on the opposite side of the river, that or the developers weren't paying that close attention to specific details as with the rail infrastructure.
And one station that you missed. KBBL radio SPRINGFIELD. No sports, no rock, no information. For mindless chatter, we're your station. KBBL talk radio. LoL
Great explanation of something that I'd often wondered about but never researched. As I'm sure you're aware, in the world of civil aviation all (to the best of my knowledge) US airports and airfields have a K designation as part of their four character identifier, so New York's John F Kennedy airport is KJFK, San Francisco is KSFO, and Dallas Fort Worth is KDFW. Beyond the US, various geographical regions have their own designations, with Canada being C, Great Britain having E and Australia having Y. Whilst most countries seem to have logical codes, as shown by the American examples above, Canada and Great Britain seem to be almost nonsensical, with Toronto's international airport having CYYZ, London's Gatwick airport being EGKK and Manchester airport being EGCC. Why on Earth is that?
