Re: Call Signs (was: Tell your conlang story!)

Note that WRR has a 3-letter callsign, indicating that it has been
around a while.  It was likely allowed to keep its pre-K callsign as
part of the conditional grandfathering done when the split took place.

Television stations around here (Atlanta) have mnemonically
significant callsigns. Channel 5 is WAGA for Atlanta, GA. Channel 11
is WXIA: the XI is 11 in Roman numerals, and the A comes from their
self-designation "11 Alive!".  When I was growing up, channel 17 was
WTCG, because it was owned by the Turner Communications Group.  Then
the company shifted focus from billboards to TV and became the Turner
Broadcasting System (my current employer), so channel 17's call
letters were changed to WTBS.  When it became the first "Superstation"
they dropped the W from its "network" name, so now it's usually called
just TBS, though the local UHF broadcast still gives the full
callsign, of course.

WGXA in Macon went the other way.  Originally it was chosen becase an
X in the middle of the postal abbreviation for Georgia signified their
location (in what is generlly called "Middle Georgia"). But they
decided to make it a backronym and held a contest to come up with the
expansion.  The winning slogan was "Worth Getting eXcited About".

This all makes me wonder: do Chinese broadcast stations have anything
equivalent to "call letters"? If so, what do they use for them?

On 2/28/06, Dana Nutter <sasxsek@...> wrote:
> > That east/west of the Mississippi is only generally
> > true, not an absolute.  Here in Dallas we are very
> > much west of the Mississippi.  Almost all of our
> > stations are of the K*** variety, but one, the
> > classical station I normally listen to is of the other
> > variety -- WRR 101.1 The Classical One.  (It is indeed
> > the one and only classical station within tuning
> > distance of Dallas/Ft. Worth.)
>
> First I've heard of anything different.  Maybe it's just a name and not
> and actual call sign.  Interestingly when I lived in New Orleans, they
> had stations with both W- and K- call signs depending upon which side of
> the river they were on.  This applied to commercial radio and television
> though.  Ham radio call signs use a different system and may also begin
> with N- or A-.   The U.S. also separates the FM band in to commercial
> (>92 MHz) and non-commercial (< 92 MHz).  Makes it easy to avoid all
> those noisy and obnoxious commercial stations.
>
> http://www.eham.net/newham/callsigns
>

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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