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Most cities mentioned in legal ID
- Thread starter ftballfan
- Start date
I take it your talking about just one station giving out many cities.
Not like EMF or Radio Bilingüe with their long list of stations/towns.
Not like EMF or Radio Bilingüe with their long list of stations/towns.
K6JHU said:
Very true. A station is required to announce call letters and the principal community written on their license. They may then optionally mention just about anything else; "AM 650 WSM Nashville - Franklin - Belle Meade - Anchorage - Mumbai" would be perfectly legal.
Now, there are a small number of stations for which more than one community appears on the license. Such as KNOW-FM 91.1, licensed to "Minneapolis-St. Paul" or KDGE licensed to "Fort Worth-Dallas". I think you can presume these came about in the old rules, when it was actually illegal to mention as part of your ID any community not on your license. If you wanted to ID as "Minneapolis-St. Paul" you had to convince the FCC to write "Minneapolis-St. Paul" on your license, and you incurred public service obligations in both cities. I note KNOW is the *ONLY* station licensed to both cities -- all other Twin Cities stations are licensed to Minneapolis OR St. Paul*, not both.
* or more likely these days with rimshots, to a suburb...
No station is licensed to more than two cities. (so the answer to the OP's question would be two
)=================================================
mimo: you left out the last location in the KFMH ID; "Everywhere!". (which means, if you don't count only those stations in the FCC-recognized part of the legal ID, KFMH clearly wins this competition by an infinite landslide...)
mimo said:
I worked in the Quad Cities for a few years shortly after college. Anyway, the most common ID was something like the single COL "Serving the Quad Cities".
Before that, I also spent the better part of a year at KFMH. Which then was basically a rebroadcast of Muscatine's KWPC from the KWPC stick on a hill west of town. The station was in an old house. AM transmitter (250 watts on 860) was in the same room as the studio, FM was just outside the studio door in the hall. Local audience, local sponsors. No pretense of being anything else. Let alone having a slew of locations in the legal ID.
This was before somebody got the bright idea to move the FM stick about 15-20 miles to the north, crank it up to 100kw, and thus create a rimshot for Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and the Quad Cities.
Sort of like being an uninvited guest crashing three parties! ;D
Here in East Kentucky, I've heard stations give a montage of several towns (probably at least 7) following the actual city of the station. Sounds kind of cool when produced well...but still gets old being played every hour for months.
102.5 'The Bone' Sarasota, Tampa, St. Pete.
Their transmitter is 40 miles away from where I am in Tampa but their signal is about as good as the other FM stations with their transmitters much closer.
On my Sangean PR-D5 and my Grundig G8, 102.5 sounds as strong as the other locals. Only on a weaker receiver can you tell the difference in signal strength.
Their transmitter is 40 miles away from where I am in Tampa but their signal is about as good as the other FM stations with their transmitters much closer.
On my Sangean PR-D5 and my Grundig G8, 102.5 sounds as strong as the other locals. Only on a weaker receiver can you tell the difference in signal strength.
As soon as it became legal to add another town to the ID, station I worked for had flip-cards that would rotate in one of those those extra town names. Maybe a couple dozen of them.
Local new operators ID their AM (in Spanish only) "Kxxx Boise Nampa Caldwell Meridian". Problem is their COL is Meridian.
Local new operators ID their AM (in Spanish only) "Kxxx Boise Nampa Caldwell Meridian". Problem is their COL is Meridian.
Taking the original post literally, the record for most cities contained in a "legal ID" (meaning just the communities of license that appear on the station license) is three. That would be KONA news/talk 610 in Washington; they ID as "Kennewick-Richland-Pasco" and that's been the case for many years. (Their FM station, on 105.3 with a music format, is officially licensed just to Kennewick.)
R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
KDNT 106.1, Denton tied that in the 70's. They ID'd "Dallas, Ft. Worth, Denton". Now they are KHKS, in the vanity call letter madness.
rbrucecarter5 said:
There is method in the madness. KHCK, Kiss, is in a virtual 3-way tie for top billing in the market. Also among the three stations is KTCK, "The Ticket". So I guess having calls that mimic the station name is effective, not crazy. It's a great way to expand the brand into the arcane world of call letters.
The FCC doesn't seem to have enuf room in their forms to spell out Pasco.
All the documentation says "KENNEWICK-RICHLAND-P, WA" ???
All the documentation says "KENNEWICK-RICHLAND-P, WA" ???
R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
jd said:
I have it on tape - many times. This was in the early 70's, 106.1 was one of the strongest DFW signals to make it into Midland. I was actually quite surprised, because at that time upper band FM stations were perceived to be at a disadvantage because of the critical alignment of the analog tuners. They pushed the envelope on the legal ID, I think, so they could be perceived as a Dallas station and sort of hide their true COL. As I recall, some Dallas stations were really upset at the time because they considered it unfair competition from a station not really in Dallas. I think there was even talk of a lawsuit over it.
KDNT was a really good station, I recorded a lot of songs off of it with the three city ID.
M
MN Maniac
Guest
This thread would not be complete without mentioning 99.9 in Palatka, Florida. This was a small town station which upgraded to full Class C status in the 1980s. Target market was Daytona Beach, but 100kW @ 1,400 feet goes a long way across the flat land and water in Florida.
By the mid-1990s, this station was WFKS "Florida's KISS FM." The COL was buried in the :50 stopset. Just a very quick "WFKS, Palatka" dry read, wedged in between 2 produced spots. At :00, a fully-produced sweeper aired: "WFKS, Daytona Beach, Orlando, Jacksonville, Gainesville. Florida's 99-point-9 KISS-FM!"
I believe they got popped by the FCC for not airing a proper Legal ID and/or airing intentionally false and deceptive IDs. It's all fun and games until Uncle Charlie comes to town.
By the mid-1990s, this station was WFKS "Florida's KISS FM." The COL was buried in the :50 stopset. Just a very quick "WFKS, Palatka" dry read, wedged in between 2 produced spots. At :00, a fully-produced sweeper aired: "WFKS, Daytona Beach, Orlando, Jacksonville, Gainesville. Florida's 99-point-9 KISS-FM!"
I believe they got popped by the FCC for not airing a proper Legal ID and/or airing intentionally false and deceptive IDs. It's all fun and games until Uncle Charlie comes to town.
R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
MN Maniac said:
I think we got a winner! I remember that one. Heard that ID many times. Their studios were in Ormond Beach, just up the road from where we were on the radio. One of their announcers liked us so much that they would turn down their monitor and listen to us while they did their own show!
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