CBC Call letters

[e-dawg]

I know that CB is reserved for Chile, but Canada has an agreement with Chile to use CB call letters. CB call is only used for CBC Owned and Operated stations. Here are the CB call letters that I know so far.

CBA - 1070 AM Moncton, NB*
CBB - None
CBC - None
CBD - 1110 AM St. John NB*
CBE - 1550 AM Windsor ON
CBF - 690 AM Montreal QC* (Radio-Canada)
CBG - 1400 AM Gander NL
CBH - 860 AM Halifax NS*
CBI - 1140 AM Sydney NS*
CBJ - 1580 AM Chicoutimi QC* (Radio-Canada)
CBK - 540 AM Watrous, SK
CBL - 740 AM Toronto, ON*
CBM - 940 AM Montreal, QC*
CBN - 640 AM St. John's NL
CBO - 920 AM Ottawa, ON *
CBP - None
CBQ - 800 AM Thunder Bay, ON *
CBR - 1010 AM Calgary, AB
CBS - None
CBT - 540 AM Grand Falls-Windsor, NL
CBU - 690 AM Vancouver, BC
CBV - 980 AM Quebec City, QC* (Radio-Canada)
CBW - 990 AM Winnipeg, MB
CBX - 740 AM Edmonton, AB
CBY - 990 AM Corner Brook, NL
CBZ - 970 AM Fredericton, NB*

* Indicate Inactive - move to FM.

Was there any use of CBB, CBC, CBP, or CBS call letters? I couldn't find any information regarding these call signs for any CBC or Radio-Canada stations.

 

[w9wi]

Was there any use of CBB, CBC, CBP, or CBS call letters? I couldn't find any information regarding these call signs for any CBC or Radio-Canada stations.

Not that I know of.

There are a fair number of stations that use CBB, CBC, CBP, or CBS as the first three letters followed by a fourth (and sometimes fifth) letter.

Not that many (any?) of the English stations actually use call letters on the air.

 

[mjlarochelle]

Was there any use of CBB, CBC, CBP, or CBS call letters? I couldn't find any information regarding these call signs for any CBC or Radio-Canada stations.

Not that I know of.

There are a fair number of stations that use CBB, CBC, CBP, or CBS as the first three letters followed by a fourth (and sometimes fifth) letter.

Not that many (any?) of the English stations actually use call letters on the air.

Some of the French stations seem to be known by their call letters by listeners (e.g., when Radio-Canada made cuts in Windsor a couple of years ago a group calling themselves CBEF-SOS was formed in protest) so I would imagine that by extension they do get occasional on-air use. On the English side I've heard that CBN in St. John's uses those call letters as part of the introduction to one of their local shows, but other than that I'm not aware of any stations using the call letters. Years ago the calls were used a lot more.

Any call letters starting with CBP are used by CBC-owned stations broadcasting either park information or WeatherRadio Canada.

If there's a fifth letter it is always a "T" for Television.

 

[azumanga]

Was there any use of CBC or CBS call letters?

As those three call letters only -- in my opinion, I think the CBC refrained the use of these calls as three-letter calls, as "CBC" would lead to confusion with the network as a whole, and "CBS" would be confused with the American network.

As mentioned before, CBC uses "CBN" in St. John's, and occasionally uses these calls on-air; while the calls are the same as the acronym for Pat Robertson's media empire, the CBC had it first.

 

[mimo]

Back in the 80's and 90's CBK used to make reference to their call letters during sign ons and sign offs back when they still signed off. They did it in a way that I've never heard anyone else ever do it. "CBC Saskatchewan broadcasts from it's CBK transmitter in Watrous at 540 on the AM dial with a power of 50,-000 watts".

 

[Dan Sys]

The Broadcasting Yearbook directory from 1977 shows the calls for 103.1 in Charlottetown as CBC. I assume this was the predecessor to what is now CBCT 96.1.

 

[mjlarochelle]

The Broadcasting Yearbook directory from 1977 shows the calls for 103.1 in Charlottetown as CBC. I assume this was the predecessor to what is now CBCT 96.1.

Additionally CBL-FM in Toronto was officially CBC-FM during the 1960s.

Somewhere on Youtube there's a video from the late 1990s promoting CBY in Corner Brook.

 

[Gregg]

I'm wondering is there any backstory in how the CBC stations got their call letters? In many cases the call letters were logical: CBO for Ottawa, CBW for Winnipeg. In Montreal the English station got CBM and the French station got CBF. But why CBL for Toronto? CBU for Vancouver?

In Toronto, we know why the SRC station is called CJBC. The corporation took over an existing station belonging to the Jarvis Street Baptist Church and never changed the call letters. What's odd is that when Toronto got an SRC TV station, it got the call letters CBLFT. But when Toronto got an SRC FM station, it got the CJBC-FM call letters. I wonder if French speakers in the Ottawa area ever thought they were getting slighted because their SRC station got the call letters CBOF, not a separate call sign like in Montreal?

Did the CBC ever explain why it phased out use of individual call letters? Shouldn't a network that has so much local programming be proud of its individual stations? If the decison was made to simply go with network programming across the nation, individual call signs wouldn't matter. But many CBC Radio 1 stations still do their own morning shows, afternoon shows and in some cases midday shows too. Even the FM stations, which pretty much run network programming around the clock, used to announce their call letters during stations I.D.s at the top of the hour and sometimes in weather forecasts after the network news.


Gregg
[email protected]

 

[fybush]

In Toronto, we know why the SRC station is called CJBC. The corporation took over an existing station belonging to the Jarvis Street Baptist Church and never changed the call letters.

Not true. The Jarvis St. Baptist Church station left the air in 1933 when Canada ceased to allow religious broadcasting. The station now known as CJBC started in 1936 as CRCY, later CBY (1938) and then CJBC (1943).

http://www.broadcasting-history.ca/listings_and_histories/radio/histories.php?id=414&historyID=195

 

[e-dawg]

Another thing.....Should all of CBC's owned and operated tv and radio stations should be using CB---, instead of CF,CH-CK?

So far here are CBC/Radio-Canada's station that aren't CB's call letters.

CBC - ENGLISH

CBC-Television
CFYK - Yelllowknife NT
CFWH - Whitehorse YT
CFFB - Iqaluit NU
CHAK - Inuvit NT
CFLA - Goose Bay NL
CHFC - Churchill MB

CBC Radio 1
CHAK - Inuvit NT
CFFB - Iqaluit NU
CFPR - Prince Rupert BC
CFWH - Whitehorse - YT
CFYK - Yellowknife NT
CFGB - Happy Valley-Goose Bay NL
CFTL - Big Trout Lake ON
CHFC - Churchill MB

CBC Radio 2
CFWH - Whitehorse YT

RADIO-CANADA (CBC FRENCH)

Radio-Canada La premiere Chaine
CHFA - Edmonton AB
CHFB - Bonnyville AB
CJBC - Toronto ON
CJBR - Rimouski QC
CHLM - Rouyn-Norada QC
CKSB - Winnipeg MB
CFWY - Whitehorse, YT
CKSF - Prince Albert SK

Radio-Canada Espace-Music
CJBC - Toronto ON
CKSB - Winnipeg MB

Radio-Canada - Televison
CKSH - Sherbrooke
CKTV - Saguenay
CJBR - Rimouski
CKTM - Trois-Riviers

 

[fybush]

Another thing.....Should all of CBC's owned and operated tv and radio stations should be using CB---, instead of CF,CH-CK?

Since the CB-- "calls" are rarely, if ever, used on the air these days anyway, they exist primarily for record-keeping by Industry Canada and the CBC itself. I don't believe any international treaties require the assignment of callsigns to domestic (AM/FM/TV) services at all; outside the Americas, the use of callsigns on those services is the exception rather than the rule.

It's worth noting that the CBC's international shortwave services have never used CB-- "calls," apparently in deference to their international assignment to Chile. The shortwave relay of CBN St. John's is CKZN, CBU Vancouver's is CKZU, and in the days when calls were assigned to the RCI transmitters at Sackville, I believe it was licensed as CKZW.

 

[azumanga]

outside the Americas, the use of callsigns on those services is the exception rather than the rule.

Outside the Americas, call signs are also used to some capacity in Japan, the Philippines and Australia. I read somewhere that Thailand also uses calls as well, but using the Thai alphabet.

 

[mjlarochelle]

It's worth noting that the CBC's international shortwave services have never used CB-- "calls," apparently in deference to their international assignment to Chile. The shortwave relay of CBN St. John's is CKZN, CBU Vancouver's is CKZU, and in the days when calls were assigned to the RCI transmitters at Sackville, I believe it was licensed as CKZW.

Minor correction - in the very early days of the CBC shortwave services, Vancouver was CBRX/CBUX and St. John's was CBNX. They changed to the current callsigns circa 1965. Sackville uses CKCX today.

Chile has in fact used CB-- callsigns in the past according to a broadcasting directory from the 1970s I once saw online, but the characters following the "CB" were always numbers, e.g. CB122. There likely was never a CBL or CBA in Chile.

According to an old broadcasting magazine on David Eduardo's website, both London transmitters of the BBC (National and Regional Programmes) in the mid-1930s used the callsign G2LO, obviously an extension of the original BBC transmitter 2LO.

 

[spunker88]

Was there any use of CBB, CBC, CBP, or CBS call letters? I couldn't find any information regarding these call signs for any CBC or Radio-Canada stations.

Im surprised the first station wasn't called CBC at least for a short period of time before all the other stations came. Or they could have become a flagship station like in the US with WABC, WCBS, and WNBC. CBS probably wasnt used to avoid confusion with the US company CBS who had their own radio stations. This would have been more of an issue in the early days of AM when stations all went by their call letters and many more people listened to AM via skywave. If somebody in the US happened to catch a station from Canada called CBS-AM they could have possibly confused it with WCBS.

 

[w9wi]

Chile has in fact used CB-- callsigns in the past according to a broadcasting directory from the 1970s I once saw online, but the characters following the "CB" were always numbers, e.g. CB122. There likely was never a CBL or CBA in Chile.

I don't think there was ever a *broadcasting* station using CBL or CBA in Chile, but several of the CBC calls are currently in use by maritime shore stations there. CBT and CBX for two.

Of course, I can't imagine anyone would confuse an English-language broadcasting station on 740KHz with a TOR data station transmitting on shortwave in Spanish...

 

[Ai4i]

OT, but...interesting history on the VO stations of Newfoundland and Labrador.
A well shielded American, we never knew how late those areas joined Canada, we think Canada was still more closely aligned with the UK back then.