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KCBS Illegal ID?

A

AlanB

I was listening at 8 AM PDT this morning via the Internet for the chance to hear the complete CBS hourly newscast (KRLD Dallas dumps out at the commericial break). The legal ID I heard the station use does not appear to be valid. "KCBS AM and HD, KFRC-FM San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose".

Since there is no such ID as a "-AM", should not the ID be "KCBS San Francisco, KCBS-HD San Francisco, KFRC-FM San Francico"?
 
If I were you, I'd get a letter over to the FCC Field Office immediately. This sort of flagrant violation of FCC rules should result in immediate action. How dare they!!!

Make sure you document the exact time you heard this monstrous violation. Remember: if we let these people get away with this once, they may try to do it again the next hour, and the next, and the next. It must be stopped, and stopped NOW.

If this does not result in CBS losing its license for these stations, I'll be shocked. Shocked, I tell you!

(Or not.)
 
I'm with you Boss Jock. We've got to stop these illegal legal IDs! ;)

You wouldn't get away with this in Arizona, now that we've got
Senate Bill KNX 1070 signed. Speaking of KNX, I don't think they're
exactly legal with their legal either. Last time I listened, KNX was
ducking in the ID at about :56, rather than just before the TOH...
which is acceptable, and certainly a bit better than those FM music
stations that bury it during the :50 stopset. It's just their verbiage
is a bit less than totally legal, similar to what you heard on KCBS.

Sarcasm and thread-wandering aside, as Scott Fybush has noted,
if you make a reasonable effort to be close to "legal legal" in your ID,
chances are the Friendly Candy Company will leave you alone. (Heck,
they have a hard enough time shutting down pirates.)

BTW Alan, your ID example was pretty much spot on--except for the
Giants road uniform typo ;D--although assuming KFRC is also running
HD, there should be a fourth element added:

"KFRC-FM HD1 San Francisco"

Shout out to Professor Fybush: is the "-FM" suffix needed for the
KFRC HD1 ID? Example being "KOOL-FM, KOOL HD1 Phoenix"--not
100% legal in itself (you really want "Phoenix" after each of the
calls), but close enough for government work.
 
oldiesfan6479 said:
Sarcasm and thread-wandering aside, as Scott Fybush has noted,
if you make a reasonable effort to be close to "legal legal" in your ID,
chances are the Friendly Candy Company will leave you alone. (Heck,
they have a hard enough time shutting down pirates.)
Click to expand...

Citations for violating the ID rule are rare, but they do happen. KBZC, Sacramento was recently given a Notice of Apparent Violation for failing to broadcast required legal ID's on five days last October and November.

The FCC tends nowadays toward enforcement only of paperwork and other rules (like this one) that require no engineering effort or expertise.
 
flakunkel said:
Citations for violating the ID rule are rare, but they do happen. KBZC, Sacramento was recently given a Notice of Apparent Violation for failing to broadcast required legal ID's on five days last October and November.
Click to expand...

Then there's the AM daytimer (its night authorization is rarely used) in the
Phoenix market that regularly fails to ID itself at sign-on and sign-off.

It's the station with the drifting lamptimer and a mega thread on the PHX
radio board.
 
oldiesfan6479 said:
I'm with you Boss Jock. We've got to stop these illegal legal IDs! ;)

You wouldn't get away with this in Arizona, now that we've got
Senate Bill KNX 1070 signed. Speaking of KNX, I don't think they're
exactly legal with their legal either. Last time I listened, KNX was
ducking in the ID at about :56, rather than just before the TOH...
which is acceptable, and certainly a bit better than those FM music
stations that bury it during the :50 stopset. It's just their verbiage
is a bit less than totally legal, similar to what you heard on KCBS.

Sarcasm and thread-wandering aside, as Scott Fybush has noted,
if you make a reasonable effort to be close to "legal legal" in your ID,
chances are the Friendly Candy Company will leave you alone. (Heck,
they have a hard enough time shutting down pirates.)

BTW Alan, your ID example was pretty much spot on--except for the
Giants road uniform typo ;D--although assuming KFRC is also running
HD, there should be a fourth element added:

"KFRC-FM HD1 San Francisco"

Shout out to Professor Fybush: is the "-FM" suffix needed for the
KFRC HD1 ID? Example being "KOOL-FM, KOOL HD1 Phoenix"--not
100% legal in itself (you really want "Phoenix" after each of the
calls), but close enough for government work.
Click to expand...

As for the HD IDs, aren't you allowed to do a text legal ID on the HD channels, since all HD radios display the text?
 
The conclusion from all of threads I've read about legal IDs is that the FCC doesn't care as long as it's close. Saying "KCBS AM and HD" is slightly quicker, less redundant, and sounds better than "KCBS and KCBS-HD."
 
Here's my take on the situation:

The FCC's rule on legal IDs (73.1201, if you're looking it up) used to be relatively concise and hard to misinterpret - once an hour, at the closest natural break in program offerings, you have to say your callsign followed by your city of license, with a very short list of acceptable insertions (licensee name, channel number or frequency, and/or network affiliation in certain circumstances).

Then came DTV and HD Radio, and the FCC made an unholy mess of 73.1201. Here's the new version, courtesy of Harold Hallikainen's site, which allows you to go back and look at earlier incarnations:

http://www.hallikainen.com/FccRules/2010/73/1201/

The weasel language you're looking for now is at the bottom of section (2)(b) - "A radio station operating in DAB hybrid mode or extended hybrid mode shall identify its digital signal, including any free multicast audio programming streams, in a manner that appropriately alerts its audience to the fact that it is listening to a digital audio broadcast. No other insertion between the station's call letters and the community or communities specified in its license is permissible."

What does that messy language mean? There have been no test cases yet to provide any indication of what the FCC now wants stations to be saying, which is why we've ended up with all that "AM and HD1" verbiage cluttering aural IDs in the last few years.

The Commission has historically taken a relatively lax enforcement approach to the exact ID language of simulcasts. "KNBC AM and FM San Francisco" might not have precisely complied with the rules as they existed in, say, 1958...but there are plenty of airchecks from the era that demonstrate that such IDs were common. I'm not a communications attorney, but I think it's fair to say that in today's regulatory environment, any station that gives at least its base callsign and COL in reasonably close succession somewhere in the vicinity of the top of the hour isn't going to face any FCC sanctions, regardless of any stray "-AM" or "-HD" or what have you that may be inserted.

As for giving the HD ID in text form, that does not yet appear to be acceptable under the current 73.1201 language, but I suspect the FCC would be amenable to a rulemaking petition to make such an ID legal. Who wants to file one?
 
I think because KCBS-FM is in a different city, they can't just say KCBS here in SF, they make it hard when 106.9 is still KFRC-FM
 
1069_KIFR said:
Over and Out. 10-4. Mark 7. KMA!!
Click to expand...

Yes, Sgt. Friday (Joe, not Jack) sometimes short-formed the ID to "KMA,"
but on radio traffic to Malloy and Reed it was always "KMA367." ;)
 
Scott Fybush said:
The Commission has historically taken a relatively lax enforcement approach to the exact ID language of simulcasts. "KNBC AM and FM San Francisco" might not have precisely complied with the rules as they existed in, say, 1958...but there are plenty of airchecks from the era that demonstrate that such IDs were common.
Click to expand...

KGO at one time identified as "KGO with FM, news and conversation for San Francisco".
 
DavidKaye said:
Scott Fybush said:
The Commission has historically taken a relatively lax enforcement approach to the exact ID language of simulcasts. "KNBC AM and FM San Francisco" might not have precisely complied with the rules as they existed in, say, 1958...but there are plenty of airchecks from the era that demonstrate that such IDs were common.
Click to expand...

KGO at one time identified as "KGO with FM, news and conversation for San Francisco".
Click to expand...

...and one of my favorite Top 40 stations in the 1960s reversed the order for years - (drum roll) "Serving Southern California from Pasadena" (jingle) "K-R-L-A"
 
sfradio said:
I think because KCBS-FM is in a different city, they can't just say KCBS here in SF, they make it hard when 106.9 is still KFRC-FM
Click to expand...
KCBS-FM is 93.1 Jack FM in Los Angeles, I don't think it would be hard to change the calls on KCBS-FM to KLJK
 
honestly, the FCC is barely hanging in there these days...the local office closed years ago. They don't really care about things like this as much as they used to...besides, I can guarantee you that a bunch of CBS lawyers approved that I.D., so trust me, it's legal.
 
When I was working in Ukiah 34 years ago, our Chief Engineer (now with Clear Channel's San Jose cluster) suggested the following legal ID:

"This is us, and we're here."

Of course, his answer to any technical question was "We're on the air, aren't we?"
 
Lkeller said:
...and one of my favorite Top 40 stations in the 1960s reversed the order for years - (drum roll) "Serving Southern California from Pasadena" (jingle) "K-R-L-A"
Click to expand...

And, of course, there is the famous one that led the FCC to tighten up the ID rules in the first place: "KABL oakland, KABL-FM SAN FRANCISCO; in the air everywhere over SAN FRANCISCO..." followed by the ring of a cable car be..
 
DavidKaye said:
And, of course, there is the famous one that led the FCC to tighten up the ID rules in the first place: "KABL oakland, KABL-FM SAN FRANCISCO; in the air everywhere over SAN FRANCISCO..." followed by the ring of a cable car be..
Click to expand...

Today of course--assuming in a simulcast the AM COL is Oakland and the
FM San Francicso (darn Giants jersey goof! ;D)--the ID example would be
absolutely to the letter of 73.1201, since you now can say anything you
want ("South San Francisco the industrial city," Susanville, Timbuktu,
whatever) after the COL, as long as the COL is first.
 
I remember the former X-100. They would play it real, real low at 2 minutes til the hour, "KXXX FM San Francisco" Then at 2 minutes past the top of the hour they would blast, "X-100 San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose!"

So yes, they did the legal ID, but people would hear/notice the latter, I'm sure many assumed they did not properly ID themselves, when they actually did.
 
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