Re: CHAT: Names of radiostations (was: Re: The young Tolkien)

> >What happens when all possible four-letter combinations have been used,
> >will everyone switch to 5 letter ones?
>
> Possibly. There are "deletions", though, like when a station
> changes format and they want to get rid of an inappropriate
> callsign.
The reason that four-letter callsigns are currently assigned is that the
FCC discovered that all the three-letter callsigns would be used up in
fairly short order.  That's why very old stations have callsigns like
"WGN" (Chicago).  Callsigns are assigned by the FCC (part of the US
federal government) and are not handed out on the whim of the recipient.
It's up to advertising wonks to turn them into something "marketable".
Thus, "WAZY" was the root for "way-zee" when it played pop but became
"Z-96" when it changed over to harder rock for a while.  Stations can
change callsigns but that is as a result of changing FCC license, not on
the whim of an owner.

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