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

On Sun, 15 Jul 2001 bjm10@CORNELL.EDU wrote:

>Callsigns are assigned by the FCC (part of the US
>federal government) and are not handed out on the whim of the recipient.
I doubt that WABC was arbitrarily assigned to the American
Broadcasting Corporation's station in NYC. Same with two
local stations, WMAL (M.A.L., I understand, are the initials
of the station's founder or first owner) and WJOK (defunct),
an all comedy station. Also WBAL, a BALtimore station and
WAMU, American University station. If I recall right, Univ.
of Maryland at College Park's station is WUMC.

>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.
My guess is that the FCC will grant "special" callsigns for reasons
of its own. It's clearly not so cut and dried.

Padraic.

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