Call letters that changed, for better or worse

[chrish]

You can always recognize a real non radio person trying to make like one, they see very successful stations such as 93KHJ or Y 100 and its monkey see monkey do
which gives you such tongue twisters as something like 770KHB or 1490GJK other similar unwieldy messes that any good PD or consultant would scoff at and laugh right out of the room.

 

[fmradio1]

You forgot to mention WBZ/Boston and KYW/Philadelphia. Both are well branded in their respective cities. Neither of them are going anywhere.

 

[joebtsflk1]

Re: When 3-letter calls go away

I think it has been unfortunate to see some of the classic 3-letter calls discarded.

WOW 590 Omaha
WJW 850 Cleveland
KHJ 930 Los Angeles
WIS 560 Columbia (WIS now on Channel 10 there)
KOL 1300 Seattle
KOB 770 Albuquerque (KOB calls belong to a TV station there I think)

St. Louis has lost three of its four 3-letter calls on AM. KSD 550, KWK 1380, and WIL 1430. Although WIL and KSD have survived on the FM band there. At least WEW 770 is still there.

That's off the top of my head. I know there are others. Should any more of the really classic 3-letter calls goes away, I'm calling it a day: WLW, WLS, WGN, WSM, WSB, WWL, WOR, WJR, KOA, KFI.

KVI Seattle
KJR Seattle
KGY Olympia
KGA Spokane
KIT Yakima
KUJ Walla Walla
KPQ Wenatchee

(Washington State must hold some kind of record on 3-Letter stations)

KXO El Centro, CA
KLZ Denver, CO
WDZ Decatur, IL
KID Idaho Falls, ID
KMJ Fresno, CA
KOY Phoenix, AZ
KMA Shenandoah, IA
WHO Des Moines, IA
KGO San Fransisco
KGB San Diego, CA
KDB Santa Barbara
KHJ Los Angeles is back, but by proxy as infamously noted.....
KUT, Austin, TX should count, though they signed on in 1958

...and of course

WWV Fort Collins, CO

Others we've lost in the last 30 years

KXA Seattle
KMO Tacoma

Others?

Iowa actually isn't far behind WA on three-toes...add WOI AM-FM Ames (and WOI-TV, no longer owned by Iowa State though) WMT AM-FM Cedar Rapids, WOC (AM) Davenport. Lost though was KSO Des Moines, which eventually became sports KXNO (all the x's and o's). If x = 24 and n = 14 the average would be 24 + 14 / 2 = 19, or s. So in a tortured sort of theorem, KSO was reborn as a four letter call w/out resorting to KKSO (although that appeared on Des Moines' now dead 1390) OK, I was really bored when I can up with x + n / 2 = s..
n =

 

[therealjm12]

In my neck of the woods a lot of call letter changes have been made for reasons that seem to have never worked out for the good.
Let's start with WKBW in Buffalo. When ownership changes split the AM and TV, for some reason channel 7 kept the WKBW-TV heritage calls and the radio side became WWKB. Both stations are a shell of what they both were.
In Rochester, Entercom allowed the classic WBBF call letters to slip away. Apparently it was an oversight. Before they could park the call letters on an another station Citadel grabbed them and put on a daytimer in Buffalo.
In Syracuse, WFBL went dark. After several years the 1390 frequency returned to the air with different call letters. The owners of WSEN (1050)took the WFBL calls for their AM. They since have bought the 1390 frequency and returned the heritage WFBL to 1390 and returned WSEN AM to 1050. After a series of format changes in the 70's & 80's 1260 WNDR the once dominate top 40 station's call letters were changed to WNNS, which remain today.
In Utica-Rome, sadly the call letters of WRUN AM/FM 1150 103.4 (where Dick Clark started his career) have been removed. WRUN-FM became WKGW in the 70's and later turned into WFRG. The AM for some reason allowed the heritage calls to slip away a couple years ago. It is now WUTI. WRUN is parked on a class A FM in Remsen. It's just a repeater for NPR WAMC in Albany. 1550 WBVM calls were changed to WUTQ in the 70's, seemingly for no reason other to confuse their listeners.
WLFH 1230 in Little Falls, calls were changed to park WIXT when Clear Channel came up with the bright idea of changing channel 9's in Syracuse to WSYR-TV. I wish Galaxy, now the owner of 1230 would change the calls back to WLFH which are now available again. And in Rome, it has been announced the the heritage calls WKAL will return to 1490 when it returns to the air. They have been dark for several years.

 

[LKellerIII]

Re: When 3-letter calls go away

I think it has been unfortunate to see some of the classic 3-letter calls discarded.

WOW 590 Omaha
WJW 850 Cleveland
KHJ 930 Los Angeles
WIS 560 Columbia (WIS now on Channel 10 there)
KOL 1300 Seattle
KOB 770 Albuquerque (KOB calls belong to a TV station there I think)

St. Louis has lost three of its four 3-letter calls on AM. KSD 550, KWK 1380, and WIL 1430. Although WIL and KSD have survived on the FM band there. At least WEW 770 is still there.

That's off the top of my head. I know there are others. Should any more of the really classic 3-letter calls goes away, I'm calling it a day: WLW, WLS, WGN, WSM, WSB, WWL, WOR, WJR, KOA, KFI.

KVI Seattle
KJR Seattle
KGY Olympia
KGA Spokane
KIT Yakima
KUJ Walla Walla
KPQ Wenatchee

(Washington State must hold some kind of record on 3-Letter stations)

KXO El Centro, CA
KLZ Denver, CO
WDZ Decatur, IL
KID Idaho Falls, ID
KMJ Fresno, CA
KOY Phoenix, AZ
KMA Shenandoah, IA
WHO Des Moines, IA
KGO San Fransisco
KGB San Diego, CA
KDB Santa Barbara
KHJ Los Angeles is back, but by proxy as infamously noted.....
KUT, Austin, TX should count, though they signed on in 1958

...and of course

WWV Fort Collins, CO

Others we've lost in the last 30 years

KXA Seattle
KMO Tacoma

Others?

KFI and KNX both still survive in Los Angeles.

KGO is the only survivor in San Francisco. When I arrived in the Bay Area in 1973, there were only two left - KGO and KRE AM and FM. The FM became KBLX by the late 70s, supposedly to reflect the new ownership of Inner City Broadcasting, a Black owned company. The AM shed the KRE calls a few years later when it switched to ethnic brokered programming.

 

[KeithE4]

Re: When 3-letter calls go away

KOY Phoenix, AZ

KOY is still around, on AM 1230 since 1999.

 

[KeyTimes950]

You forgot to mention WBZ/Boston and KYW/Philadelphia. Both are well branded in their respective cities. Neither of them are going anywhere.

KYW has an interesting history, nonetheless. It began in Chicago and I seem to recall it was in Cleveland (before NBC and Group W swapped stations). Also, I think WBZ started out (correct me if I am wrong) in Springfield, Mass.

 

[w9wi]

You forgot to mention WBZ/Boston and KYW/Philadelphia. Both are well branded in their respective cities. Neither of them are going anywhere.

KYW has an interesting history, nonetheless. It began in Chicago and I seem to recall it was in Cleveland (before NBC and Group W swapped stations). Also, I think WBZ started out (correct me if I am wrong) in Springfield, Mass.

Correct on both accounts.

 

[Jul]

1210 AM in 1990, when CBS decided to change the call letters and format of WCAU-AM to oldies WOGL-AM.

 

[DougD]

WABI (AM) and WABI-TV in Bangor, Maine, were long co-owned by Maine Governor Horace Hildreth and his family. They were, respectively, the oldest radio station and oldest television station in the state (1924 and 1953). The Hildreths sold the radio station back in the late '80s, but since the two stations had been tied together so long and still shared a noted employee (TV and radio personality George Hale, who will celebrate his 60th year on the Bangor airwaves in 2013), the family allowed the new owners of the radio station to retain the original call letters.

Fast-forward to two years ago. The radio station, which went through a couple of successive owners until being bought by Clear Channel, was sold to an outfit called Blueberry Broadcasting, which within a few months moved Hale from WABI to its sister talk station WVOM (FM) and changed WABI's format to all-sports, largely a satellite feed from Entercom's WEEI in Boston. As a concession to WEEI, it altered the station's call letters --- after nearly 90 years --- to WAEI. A short time afterward, Blueberry had a contract dispute with Entercom and dropped WEEI's programming in favor of FOX Sports. Thus the call letter change wound up being completely pointless. Stupid.

On a funnier note: Back in the '80s, tiny WCAT in my dad's home town of Orange, Massachusetts, was sold by its original owner, who put it on the air in the 1950s. It was a popular little station in the region, and everybody knew it, of course, as "The Cat." The new owners inexplicably changed the call to . . . WPNS. ;D

That was mercifully brief, but the station never really recovered. :-[

 

[DougD]

Don't forget to add WWJ in Detroit. WJZ in Baltimore and KQV in Pittsburgh to the three-letter list. CBS managed to get the WJZ calls assigned to its Baltimore sports stations because they had already been "grandfathered" for WJZ-TV 13 as a result of the earlier Westinghouse ownerships both there and decades ago in Newark.

 

[DougD]

What with the CBC closing down its major-market AMs and moving the Radio One format over to FM, I wonder how many three-letter CBC AMs remain? The process is, I believe, still in transition. Does anyone out there have an answer?

 

[fybush]

The remaining three-letter CBC AMs are:

CBG 1400 Gander NL
CBI 1140 Sydney NS (was supposed to be moving to FM, but never did)
CBK 540 Watrous SK (has a nested FM repeater)
CBN 640 St. John's NL
CBR 1010 Calgary AB (has a nested FM repeater)
CBT 540 Grand Falls NL
CBU 690 Vancouver BC (has a nested FM repeater)
CBW 990 Winnipeg MB (has a nested FM repeater)
CBX 740 Edmonton AB (has a nested FM repeater)
CBY 990 Corner Brook NL

The CBC has preserved most of the remaining three-letter calls on FM, in some cases on the existing Radio Two FM (CBA-FM, CBD-FM, CBE-FM, CBH-FM, CBL-FM, CBM-FM, CBQ-FM) and in others by moving the three-letter call to FM with Radio One or Radio-Canada premiere chaine (CBF CBJ, CBO, CBV). I think "CBZ" went away in the move from AM to FM in Fredericton NB; there wasn't a "CBZ-FM" doing Radio Two because CBD-FM from Saint John also served Fredericton.

 

[DougD]

I find it curious, Scott, that the CBC has retained many of its little low-power AM repeaters --- most of them in small towns --- while it has closed down most of the larger AM stations, many of which had coverage areas that included those towns.