K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
That's the whole point. Since WKRP is a LPFM, they can give permission for any station in a different service to also use their call letters. That can include a full-power FM somewhere.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
Who wants to be WKRP?
- Thread starter KilowattKat
- Start date
That's the whole point. Since WKRP is a LPFM, they can give permission for any station in a different service to also use their call letters. That can include a full-power FM somewhere.
Oh, that makes it easier.
I couldn't. If the goal was to do it on streaming, just bypass broadcast altogether. There's probably a better brand for you than something associated with a TV show that ended 44 years ago.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
It does. The LPFM's calls are officially WKRP-LP.
That means WKRP-FM, WKRP-TV, WKRP-DT, WKRP-DC, and WKRP (by itself on an AM) are all legally possible.
That would indeed be life imitating art.
I wonder if Howard Hesseman's estate would give consent (money would inevitably be involved) for his voice to be recreated using AI? 20th Century Fox (or whoever the successor to MTM's intellectual property is) would also probably have to be involved.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
A really good example was when Disney bought KHJ-TV/9 in Los Angeles back in 1989. They paid KCAL-FM/96.7 out in the Inland Empire to consent to sharing the calls. (All that for the slogan "California 9" which didn't last even one decade.)
Another example was the KNIN call letters, which were (and still are) in use by KNIN(FM) 92.9 in Wichita Falls, TX. When someone wanted to use those call letters for a TV station on channel 9 in the Boise, ID market, they cut some sort of deal to use those call letters, and thus KNIN-TV in Caldwell, ID was born.
Were they hoping at the time to expand statewide into a regional superstation or something? The "California 9" branding never made sense to me. It sounded more like a lotto drawing you might tune into on KCAL than like the station itself.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
They had, for most of the 1970s and the early 1980s, been distributed via microwave to Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and western Texas, along with the other three independents in L.A. (KTLA/5, KTTV/11, and KCOP/13). But that was already in the past by 1989 and I don't believe they had aspirations to be on satellite as the core of their new schedule was -- and still is -- a three-hour block of live, local news in prime time (called "Prime 9 News" when it launched).
I read somewhere that the Disney executives knew they could keep the KHJ-TV call letters, because KHJ/930 had abandoned them after the "Car Radio" debacle in favor of the KRTH calls as "Smokin' Oldies". But they did some research and discovered that by then, the audience was indifferent at best and thought channel 9 was inferior at worst.
So they made a clean break with a new identity. It was a radical move at the time, since stations didn't take on an imaging name like "California 9". Although, as I said, it didn't last, it did last long enough to erase "KHJ-TV" from most viewers' minds.
Probably not a chance.
On the show, it was carp. I think Herb wore a fish costume.
But it's understandable if no one would use that word to describe their own station.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I think @NorthcoastRadio is correct about creator Hugh Wilson's intent, but I doubt CBS said anything beyond "just don't call it 'crap' on the show", leading to the station mascot being a carp. It was a thinly-veiled inside joke, understood by the radio industry but largely ignored by the viewers.
Besides, I shudder to think what a station "crap" mascot would be depicted as ...
I worked for a station that "sold" our calls. Not sure exactly how that was done, precisely. But $35,000 exchanged hands, and that was a fair chunk of change in the early 80s for sure. Especially for a small market station to receive.
(Double post)
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
It's pretty straightforward, actually. Someone who has a station in a different service than yours (e.g., you are an AM and they are an FM) negotiates a deal with you to share the call letters, they pay you and then you provide a written statement authorizing your call letters' use which is filed in LMS as an attachment to the call letter change application.
The only legal restriction -- other than not being in the same service -- is that you have to have the appropriate suffix attached to your new calls. If you are sharing WXXX-TV for your FM station, you have to be WXXX-FM and give the calls that way for the hourly legal ID.
Didn't KPNW-FM Seattle pay for the use of the calls from KPNW-AM Eugene, OR?
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I believe so, but the correct identification of the original station is KPNW (AM) as there is no such thing as an -AM suffix for call letters.
Duly noted. I don't always follow written FCC written punctuation, though.