Talk:Call signs in North America

Does this article serve any useful purpose that is not better set out in callsign? I just corrected two fundamental errors here that I had already fixed in callsign months ago. I think a merger is indicated. 18.26.0.18 04:53, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Callsign" versus "call sign"

A recent edit did a search-and-replace of "call sign" for "callsign" throughout the article. I do not think this is the Wikipedia way; either form is acceptable, so editors should not change an article from the form with which it was written. (For the same reason I'm not going to change it back.) The same edit also changed "initialism" into "initialization" so it may just be a bad spell-checker run amok. My personal preference is for one word, "callsign", but the FCC uses "call sign" and many others use "call letters" or just "calls". 18.26.0.18 03:54, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

RE: call sign vs callsign, may have done this while using a spell checking program. My main purpose was writing some articles in individual radios stations. Also, whenever I encounter an Americanism of the spelling of a word, I try to leave it alone. I have no problem with you changing it back if I inadvertently did that. If so, I apologize. I wish the ieSpell program was better able to adjust to this. Vaoverland 04:01, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

I deleted the Trivia section as per your request. Vaoverland 09:49, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Call sign sharing

The article says: "The FCC allows FM and TV stations under common ownership with a three-letter AM or FM in the same market to use five-letter (three plus "-FM" or "-TV" suffix) callsigns" (emphasis added). I think that the "in the same market" limitation is either no longer applicable or there are exceptions, such as KCBS-TV in Los Angeles and KCBS (AM) and KCBS-FM in San Francisco.

--Hillrhpc 04:07, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

KCBS is not a grandfathered three-letter call. There are no restrictions on the reuse of four-letter calls with service suffix other than consent of the longest incumbent owner. 121a0012 03:09, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

Short Callsigns - Another Exception

I'm thinking a paragraph might be wrong.

The FCC allows FM and TV stations under common ownership with a three-letter AM or FM in the same market to use five-letter (three plus "-FM" or "-TV" suffix) callsigns...

KOB-TV (Albuquerque, New Mexico) still uses a three-letter callsign, although it hasn't had common ownership with KOB Radio (now KKOB) for at least 25 years. And, as I just pointed out, KOB Radio no longer uses the three-letter callsign; it's now four letters (KKOB), which happened in 1986, well after KOB-TV/Radio split up.

Are KOB-TV and WJZ-TV (mentioned in the article) just grandfathered in, then? -Oddtoddnm 05:36, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

KOB-TV is grandfathered, yes, for the reasons you state. WJZ-TV is not grandfathered—the original grant of WJZ-TV was exceptional (and probably a mistake on the part of the FCC staff, although I have not researched the primary sources—if any are available—to see how it was treated administratively). Remember that this article is not intended to be a compendium of all stations which have grandfathered callsigns; the stations mentioned are only by way of example. 121a0012 21:12, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

Why???

This article doesn't answer the fundamental question. Why do these exist? We get on fine without them in the UK, and they are not exactly snappy marketing tools. What is the point of them? Who made the decision to use them and why? 82.35.34.11 22:46, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Whatever reasons governments may have had for introducing call signs in the 1920s are probably out-of-scope for this article. The short answer to your question is: there are more than 20,000 broadcast stations in North America. How else are you going to keep them all straight? (The UK gets on fine without a lot of things USians consider necessary, as one might well expect for a country the size of Minnesota!) 121a0012 02:22, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I also find it fascinating that most US tv stations use them for identity, instead of making up a more snappy or more memorable title. It must just be a cultural difference, but WRCTV doesn't really do it for me. (I don't think Minnesota pop 4,919,479 can be compared seriously with the UK pop 59,834,300) —This unsigned comment was added by 82.42.121.167 (talk • contribs) .

The correct comparison is 225,000 km² versus 245,000 km². 121a0012 02:39, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Then Russia's the greatest, most important country in the world. Congratulations to them. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.42.121.167 (talk • contribs) .

Congratulations for introducing an irrelevant strawman. Do you have a real point? 121a0012 01:15, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

US W and K call sign regions

I don't think that the W and K convention for east/west of the Mississippi has been followed for many years. There are too many (new, not grandfathered) exceptions to this for it to be true anymore. I think the FCC is allocating these either on demand (vanity), or sequentially for both prefixes, without respect to geographic location. --ssd 00:14, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

The FCC rules say otherwise, and your mention of new exceptions is news to me. Can you name some? 121a0012 02:00, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, it is certainly not true in the way they do the amateur radio call sign allocations; the region is strictly on the digit in the middle, not the prefix, which seems to be allocated by class, not location. (Currently, tech gets KI, extra gets AI.) Half my local commercial stations are K, half are W. --ssd 14:12, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know that the K/W split has ever been relevant to the amateur service (or even to broadcast auxiliary services; one station near where I used to live had auxiliary licenses KEH93, KEH94, WHA855, and WHA856). Perhaps the article can more clearly express that all the rules described are for broadcast stations only. As for your local broadcast stations, in order for that to be the case, you must live in a market that straddles the Mississippi, as discussed in the article, or else in a very small community west of the Mississippi but in the central time zone (the western boundary of which roughly follows the old K/W line). Experimental broadcast callsigns, although allocated out of the amateur series, do follow the division. 121a0012 02:48, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I think the K/W split did apply to amateur many years ago. Clearly it no longer does. As to my local stations being K/W, I'm on the east coast, so I don't think the market straddles the Mississippi. I think the FCC uses a lot of these rules as guidelines, but in the last 5 years has been happy to ignore them when convenient. --ssd 07:49, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

If you are on the east coast, then it is certainly not the case that "half [your] local commercial stations are K, half W". There are only seven "eastern K" stations anywhere in the country, and only two of them (KYW and KYW-TV) are on the east coast. (For the record, the other five are KDKA, KDKA-TV, KQV, KTGG, and KFIZ. The first three are in Pittsburgh, KTGG is in Michigan, and KFIZ is in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.) Even the "Mississippi Valley" exception covers very few stations; outside of Louisiana and Minnesota, there are (according to the FCC's own database) only eleven such stations. 121a0012 02:48, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

K anomalies

• KDKA got its callsign as a result of the point in time in which it was licensed; it was the first non-government licensed station (other non-gov stations were amateur and had random calls) and was assigned the next available call in the sequence. This was by the Bureau of Navigation, predating the FCC and the K-W/Mississippi rule (though during a hiatus between June 1920 and April 1921 of the Bureau's rule of giving K-calls to ships and W-calls to land stations). The restoration of that ship/land K/W rule also led to the assignment of WBAP. http://earlyradiohistory.us/recap.htm . Also, http://earlyradiohistory.us/kwtrivia.htm has more trivia on K/W anomalies. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ (AMA) 06:14, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Canadian call signs starting with "CB"

To the best of my knowledge, there is not any special agreement between the governments of Canada and Chile regarding the use of CB... call signs by stations belonging to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Rather, this practice was undertaken unilaterally by Canada. See Talk:Call sign for more details. Richwales 04:31, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

How'd you like to buy the letter "N?"

The article ITU prefix states that the United States has been assigned three letters as prefixes: K, W, and N. K and W are well-covered here, but N isn't mentioned at all. Is it reserved for some other purpose? Are there stations whose call signs begin with N? I've wandered around the related articles, but I haven't seen an explanation, and I think this article is the best place for it. Thanks. | Mr. Darcy talk 18:37, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there are two sorts of stations which use the letter "N" for their callsigns in the U.S.: stations belonging to the United States Navy and all aircraft. (By treaty, aircraft tail numbers are allocated from the flag nation's international call sign series. This is explained in the main call sign article, if I'm not mistaken, or should be if it's not.) I believe I've also seen "N" callsigns for some amateur stations, although I could well be wrong. One broadcast station (a shortwave broadcaster based in the South) requested the callsign "NDXE", and was refused. The U.S. also has AAA–ALZ, and I don't know what use it has other than some ham call signs. An example of a Navy station is NAA at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, but I don't know anything about it (or if it even still exists at all) so someone else will have to write about that. 121a0012 01:14, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Great answer, thank you. I created an article on NAA (radio station); the facility now appears to be in Cutler, Maine, although I found several references to one in the first half of the 20th century based in Arlington, Virginia. | Mr. Darcy talk 01:42, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I think I remember reading that, as "N" is the initial used for US Navy stations, the "A" series are US Army stations. I have nothing to back this up, though; anybody else? -- Kevin F. Story (talk) 18:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)