Question: Dual Cities of License

[Bob E. Nelson]

There is also a gray area on "licensee" (the one I cited) as to whether you have to do the full license name ("CBS North Shore License Holding, LLC") or whether you can say "A CBS Station" since CBS is the parent of CBSNSLH, LLC.

I likely can dig out a 23-year old aircheck to confirm this but I do recall the ID we voiced live at 105.3 in the 80's:

KQZY, Group W, a Westinghouse Broadcasting station, Dallas-Ft. Worth

As best as I remember, that insertion of the ownership immediately after the calls may have been standard practice with all Group W stations. A good percentage of our staff was from Pittsburgh and it came naturally to us since we grew up hearing it on KDKA. A few of my colleagues at the time asserted that the ID wasn't legal because the COL wasn't adjacent to the callsign. That immediately (and inevitably) then escalated into a Steelers-Cowboys argument between the factions.

And, for what it's worth, we did do the ID as close to the TOH as possible instead of burying it in the :50 spotbreak.
By the way, the "-Ft. Worth" appendage wasn't part of the community of license. It was (and still is, as KRLD-FM) licensed only to Dallas.

 

[jh]

I remember talking with Bruce Elving about dual-city IDs back in the 70s, and I think he may discuss it in one edition or another of the FM Atlas in that era. Back then the FCC would only allow a dual city ID if the station was licensed that way... and the station had to put a city-grade signal over the 2nd city and the station was required to do the public file ascertainment for both cities.

Keep in mind that the rules have changed over time. Dual ID's come from dual "location" licenses, which could come from a variety of reasons including consolidation of a city, etc.

Ascertainment was not done for the public file, but for license renewal... and the license renewal had to be put in the public file. Ascertainment and the public file came about across the time period of the late 60's and early 70's. I recall first doing ascertainment for a new station application in 1970, and the public file came a bit later.

In any case, ascertainment was not done just for the city of license, but for the community served. /quote]

The station Bruce and I talked about was KFMW, located in Waterloo, IA... but licensed to Waterloo-Cedar Rapids, IA, two separate markets. They were on a 2000' TV tower, so put a city grade signal over both cities, and had AMs in both plus a TV station covering both. In this case, they would have done ascentainment for both markets already.

Of course there were stations who got around the dual-city ID limitation... "KLFM Ames, serving Des Moines and all of central Iowa."

I had Bruce Elving as an instructor for a couple of radio and TV classes at Iowa State University back in the mid-70s, and we kept in touch over the years. I believe I was the only student who already had an FM Atlas, must have been one of the early editions.

 

[w9wi]

It's a bit ironic that David mentioned the Norfolk & Elizabeth City markets.

Just last week, the public TV station currently licensed to Hampton-Norfolk, Virginia (yes, it does hold a dual-city license) applied to change the two cities to Elizabeth City-Norfolk.

The petition doesn't say but I would strongly suspect the point is to ensure the station receives must-carry protection in North Carolina areas of its OTA coverage area.

The rules changes over the years have certainly made this a complex topic!

 

[Megapsycle]

I remember when I worked at KFAD in '70-71 they were in a transition moving the main studio from Cleburne to Arlington. At first the ID was "KFAD Cleburne-Arlington" with most of the programming coming from Cleburne. Then after Jan 1 1971 we started IDing "KFAD Arlington-Cleburne". With that came less than 50% b'cast time from the Cleburne studio and more than 50% from Arlington. It was a gradual move that took at least a year to satisfy the FCC. I don't remember all the details. I just played records, read the meters, and filled out logs.

 

[Laurence Glavin]

I don't know if the synchronous AMs in Lowell and Lawrence, Mass are unique any more (there may be a synchronous operation in Hawaii thes days I believe), but for decades, the license for WLLH was COL, Lowell, Mass with an experimental synchronized transmitter in nearby Lawrence, Mass. Recently, the Lawrence operation became co-licensed, but in all that time, WLLH was always "WLLH, Lowell and Lawrence".

 

[LibertyNT]

Doesn't KKDA 730 have a synchronous transmitter?

 

[jd]

No, it was shut down several years ago.