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Co-channel stations with similar sounding call letters.

frankberry

Administrator
Inactive User
Another confusing set of cochannel call letters familiar to many around these parts during critical hours was WEAW 1330 Evanston, IL and WELW 1330 Willoughby, OH.


And to this day Evanston's 1330/WKTA at my location all day long mixes with 1330/WNTA from Rockford, IL. Maybe we can lead off ai4a's proposed new thread with that one!
 
Biggest "back in the day" example I can think of is WMRI, Marion, Indiana and WMRN, Marion, Ohio. Both Class B on 106.9, both Beautiful Music.
 
The two Marions add something special.
OK, here is one that will require someone with better resources, or a better memory than I, or both.
I should have suggested similar sounding call letters or the same station name.
These stations, and I think their call letters were something like WAIV and WAVE or similar, were co-channel, were close enough to QRM each other, and were both called "The Wave" or "Wave FM".
One was in Jacksonville, FL, and the other I think was north of Jacksonville, Maybe eastern Georgia or eastern South Carolina.
All I remember is driving through the area and being very confused, and that was in the late 60s or early to middle 70s.
Let us find out the details, because I do not know what they are or were and am curious.
 
In Tampa, we have WFLA and WFLZ, but both of them had the same call letters back in the day. WFLA could be either the AM station 970 or TV Channel 8 and WFLZ is 93.3.
 
Speaking of WFLA. When I lived in Tampa and heard 540 from Orlando, I always wondered why they also called themselves WFLA.

I didn't know more than one station on the AM band could use the same call letters.

I'm sure there's some legitimate way to do so that I wasn't aware of.
 
The various "WFLAs" don't have the same legal call letters. Orlando (the old Cypress Gardens station) is legally WFLF, but you'll only hear it at the top of the hour. Same with the others. There's nothing illegal about branding as "WFLA" or anything else as long as you do legal IDs once an hour as required.
 
When I lived in Ohio, I could often get one of 2 "101.5 The Rivers", one in Toledo, one somewhere in Southern Ohio (I think trying to rimshot Huntington WV). Since then, Dayton Ohio has a full power 101.5 and at least one of the "Rivers" has changed.


The two Marions add something special.
OK, here is one that will require someone with better resources, or a better memory than I, or both.
I should have suggested similar sounding call letters or the same station name.
These stations, and I think their call letters were something like WAIV and WAVE or similar, were co-channel, were close enough to QRM each other, and were both called "The Wave" or "Wave FM".
One was in Jacksonville, FL, and the other I think was north of Jacksonville, Maybe eastern Georgia or eastern South Carolina.
All I remember is driving through the area and being very confused, and that was in the late 60s or early to middle 70s.
Let us find out the details, because I do not know what they are or were and am curious.
 
The various "WFLAs" don't have the same legal call letters. Orlando (the old Cypress Gardens station) is legally WFLF, but you'll only hear it at the top of the hour. Same with the others. There's nothing illegal about branding as "WFLA" or anything else as long as you do legal IDs once an hour as required.

Both of those stations calling themselves "WFLA" are owned by the same company and offer similar programming. As does another "WFLA", which IIRC, is on FM in the Florida Panhandle.
 
The two Marions add something special.
OK, here is one that will require someone with better resources, or a better memory than I, or both.
I should have suggested similar sounding call letters or the same station name.
These stations, and I think their call letters were something like WAIV and WAVE or similar, were co-channel, were close enough to QRM each other, and were both called "The Wave" or "Wave FM".
One was in Jacksonville, FL, and the other I think was north of Jacksonville, Maybe eastern Georgia or eastern South Carolina.
All I remember is driving through the area and being very confused, and that was in the late 60s or early to middle 70s.
Let us find out the details, because I do not know what they are or were and am curious.

WAIV was 96.9 in Jacksonville from 1975-1990, mostly adult contemporary, while Savannah's 97.3 is still WAEV. They've been Kiss FM for a long time, but were "The Wave" in the 80s and early 90s.

You also had WAVF on 96.1 in Charleston from 1985-2007, 96 Wave with a AAA format. Confusing, indeed.
 
WAIV was 96.9 in Jacksonville...while Savannah's 97.3 is still WAEV.
You also had WAVF on 96.1 in Charleston.
My memory failed me, but I will lay some of the blame on my w-i-d-e analogue car radio.
I wanted to say 96.9 because just a few years before that, I had been a listener to/of WPDQ-FM with the automated Drake "Solid Gold Rock and Roll" format.

Off topic, but...
I was a UF student in Gainesville, had a rotable rooftop FM yagi antenna, and was keenly aware that my other receivable "SGR&R" station, WDIZ in Orlando sounded much more slicker and smoother.
A DXer friend of mine called to tell me that he was listening to WDIZ (100.3) as their tower went horizontal...collapsed.
 
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Here in New York state, we have stations called "100.5 The Drive"... WDRE in the Binghamton market, and WDVI in the nearby Rochester market. I've heard both here in Poughkeepsie, but the Binghamton drive is heard very often, while the Rochester drive is somewhat of a DX catch.
 
I don't know for sure how common it was to receive the two stations back-to-back in the same area--perhaps somewhere around Monmouth, IL--but back from about 1977-1995 western Illinois had the former WGEN-FM 104.9 Geneseo, IL (east of the Quad Cities) and WGEM-FM 105.1 Quincy back-to-back on the FM dial. Both with a country format at the time. And both were St. Louis Cardinals radio affiliates.

WGEN was eventually moved to DeWitt, Iowa and is now KQCS (country as "104.9 the Hawk") while WGEM-FM switched to talk in the early 2000s (but is still on 105.1 and still in Quincy as part of the Quincy Newspapers' home base).
 
They're not co-channel, but 1st adjacent and with territory in the middle that could hear both stations during the day: 980 WITY Danville IL and WITZ Jasper IN
 
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