Radio Call Letters Do They Mean Anything?

[bluebird9]

How did KGO acquire only three call letters while everybody else in the Bay Area has four letters?
Do call letters stand for anything and who picks the letters?
Why only one station in the Bay Area with three call letters?

Does KFRC stand for anything or KGO?
Obviously KCBS stands for the network, KSFO San Francisco, KFOG the fog of San Francisco.
KNBR etc...

Who owns the old call letters?
I believe there was a radio station in the Bay Area a long time ago with the call letters KROW.
I think those are cool call letters for a station.
KOME, KMPX, KSFX, KYUU,KYA who owns those call letters?
Or are they up for grabs.

 

[w9wi]

How did KGO acquire only three call letters while everybody else in the Bay Area has four letters?

KGO got three because they were there early & never changed. Some other stations used to have three-letter calls but got them changed to four-letter calls over the years. (1260 which of course used to be KYA; KVTO-1400 was KRE; KCBS-740 used to be KQW; I'm sure there are more examples) The last three-letter call was issued in 1930 but for the most part everyone was getting four-letter calls years before.

Do call letters stand for anything and who picks the letters?

Sometimes.

All three-letter calls were chosen by the government. Early four-letter calls were as well. (in the West, usually those with W, Y, or Z as the third letter) Early in the four-letter-call period, stations were allowed to request specific callsigns that would be granted if available. I would say by the early- to mid-1930s all callsigns were requested by the stations. (but that's an educated guess)

Many stations will tell you their three-letter calls *do* stand for something. What usually happened was that, after the government assigned a set of calls, the station held a contest & asked the listeners to tell them what the letters stood for. IOW the letters were chosen first, then the slogan, not the other way around. (would a station really choose the letters "WIS" so they could use the slogan "Wonderful Iodine State"?!)

Who owns the old call letters?
I believe there was a radio station in the Bay Area a long time ago with the call letters KROW.
KOME, KMPX, KSFX, KYUU,KYA who owns those call letters?

KROW: on a FM station in Lovell, Wyoming
KMPX: on a TV station in Decatur, Texas
KSFX: on a FM station in Roswell, New Mexico
KYUU: on an AM station in Liberal, Kansas
KYA, KOME: not used

Any of these calls could be reused on a station in a different service - for example, KMPX could be assigned to a FM station, or KSFX on AM. KYA is probably gone forever, since they didn't preserve it on an FM or TV outlet anywhere and the FCC is not in the business of assigning new three letter calls.

 

[rickradio]

Why only one station in the Bay Area with three call letters?

In the early/mid 20s, 3-letter call signs were the norm. It wasn't until 1924 that a Bay Area station got the first 4-letter call sign in Northern California: KFRC. But 3-letter call signs were still issued (e. g., KYA in 1926). And as w9wi said, the stations who still have the 3-letter call signs got them while the Commerce Dept. still issued them and they are grandfathered as the FCC doesn't and hasn't issued 3-letter call signs for decades.

For KNBR's first 25 years, its call letters were KPO, KDIA was KLS, today's KNEW began life as KLX, w9wi already mentioned KCBS...KFBK used to be KVQ, etc. I didn't know that the Federal Radio Commission issued 3-letter signs until 1930, though. I didn't know when the "stop point" was for the 3-letter signs.

I believe there was a radio station in the Bay Area a long time ago with the call letters KROW

KROW (960 AM) became KABL in 1959 when Gordon McLendon bought it and made it a "Beautiful Music" station. It's now KQKE I believe.

Do call letters stand for anything and who picks the letters?

The FCC gives a licensee three choices for call signs, provided they aren't already taken, of course. Otherwise, I think they just issue an arbitrary set of letters. As for the letters standing for something, the story goes that KHJ stood for "Kindness Happiness and Joy," though what w9wi said about the meaning of the letters being ascribed AFTER they were issued is entirely believable. BossRadioDJ can tell you what KFRC (and others) supposedly stood for after he's done picking brain chunks up off the floor (inside joke, sorry ;D). The "R" and "C" stood for "Radio Clearness." How 'bout it, Dave? A few other examples are:

WLS -- World's Largest Store (Sears owned it)
WGN -- World's Greatest Newspaper (Chicago Tribune)

Examples of "vanity" call letters are:

KROY -- Royal Miller (original owner/licensee, 1937)
KBEE -- Modesto Bee (both AM & FM) (McClatchy Newspapers?)
KXOA
KXOB
KXOC -- All sister stations in Northern California (KXOA became KIID Radio Disney, KXOB became KJOY, KXOC became KPAY)
KCRA -- Was supposed to be "KRCA," but an FCC typist made a mistake and flipped the two middle call letters around...anyway, KRCA was chosen because of its NBC affiliation
KTOB -- KTop Of Bay
KVON -- KVoice Of Napa
KECC -- KEastern Contra Costa (became KKIS) (thanks BossRadioDJ)
KNBA -- Kovers North Bay Area
KSTN -- KSTocktoN
KTKZ -- K-Talk(Z) (K-Talks)
KVFS -- KVacaville Fairfield Suisun (became KUIC)

and on and on and on...

 

[michael hagerty]

In its most lurid "Eyewitness News" days (with anchor Van Amburg doing teasers like "He drove up to the tollbooth with a dollar in his hand..and left with a bullet in his gut. Film at 11!"...not to mention Valerie Coleman's "Severed penis found on railroad tracks in the East Bay. Film at 11!"), KGO Television was said to stand for Kickers, Guts and Orgasms.

---Michael Hagerty

 

[WordLife]

On a funnier note, I read somewhere that a station was given the call letters KUNT...True story

 

[newsperson]

Newsperson responds:

Bluebird9,

KFRC spells Francisco.

1470 KNDE in Sacramento was meant to spell Candy.

KROW became 780 KROW in Reno and is now KKOH.

There is a new Air America affiliate in Reno with the call letters KJFK. (John F. Kennedy)

KWOD 106.5 in Sacramento was always meant to mean quadraphonic. However many listeners called it K-WOD. They also called the station's owner Ed Stolz many names.

AM 590 KTHO certainaly means "Tahoe" and is known as K-Tahoe.

The former KPTL 1300 AM in Carson City, Nevada was meant to say Capitol Radio (the state's capitol) and not "praise the lord"

Educational Media Foundation has many different stations with call letters that come close to Love for their K-Love format.

The old K-ZAP 98.5 in Sacramento were great call letters of the time for a progressive station. It is now the Eagle as a classic rock station and I do not know their letters.

Up north KSRO is Santa Rosa and isn't there some stations that reflect wine in their name?

And I had always thought that Channel 3, KCRA was meant to spell part of Sacramento.

Any other good calls letters that anyone can think of that try and spell names?

Newsperson

 

[Mark77]

I know that this doesn't apply to the San Francisco area, but here in Canada, where I'm from, all of the radio & TV station call signs start - rather appropriately - with C, which stands for Canada. In my hometown of Montreal, there exist several examples of radio & TV stations whose call letters have meanings, such as:

CFCF Channel 12 (formerly AM 600): Canada's First, Canada's Finest.
CJRS AM 1650 (Radio Shalom): CJ Radio Shalom. It could also mean Canada's Jewish Radio Station, but the first meaning is the actual one.
CKAC AM 730: Canadian Kilocycle Amérique Canada.
CKGM AM 990 (Sports Talk - The Team 990): CK Greater Montreal.
CFMB AM 1280: Canada's First Multilingual Broadcaster.
CJMS AM 1040: Canada Je Me Souviens (Canada, I remember).
CFQR FM 92.5 (Q92): CF Quebec Radio
CBF FM 95.1 (CBC Radio): Canadian Broadcasting French.
CBM FM 93.5 (CBC Radio 2): Canadian Broadcasting Montreal.
CISM FM 89.3 (Universite de Montreal): Communication Information Sur la Montagne.
CKOI FM 96.9: CKOI is a homonym of "C'est quoi?", meaning "What is it?" in French.
CINQ FM 102.3: Cinq (pronounced "sank") is the French word for 5, as the station once had programming in 5 different languages.
CITE FM 107.3: CITÉ (see-tay) = French for city.

What do you think of those?

 

[create]

I'm surprised that CBS has never tried to bring the KOME call letters back to the market. Last I heard they were parked on some CP in Texas or something like that.

 

[Bryan Simmons]

Newsperson responds:



The old K-ZAP 98.5 in Sacramento were great call letters of the time for a progressive station. It is now the Eagle as a classic rock station and I do not know their letters.

Newsperson

I worked middays at KZAP after they became a Superstars-AOR formatted station and can tell you that it is now KRXQ and goes by 98-Rock. It's sister station, the Eagle is another property I worked at, my first commercial on-air gig to be exact and it was for many year KROI-FM and then KROY-FM. Previous to that I don't recall, but it may have had a different set of calls for a short time during the 80's as well when the Johnson's owned it.

 

[Bryan Simmons]

Newsperson responds:


the Eagle as a classic rock station and I do not know their letters.


Newsperson

Forgot to add that the Eagle's calls are KSEG.

 

[jimmythebassett]

KNBR because KNBC was taken. KFRC Does stand for something, but I can't remember. KMEL was for CAMEL when it was rock.

 

[jimmythebassett]

KNBR because KNBC was taken. KFRC Does stand for something, but I can't remember. KMEL was for CAMEL when it was rock. They did not stand for "Francisco" or "Frisco", nor did they stand for "Known For Radio Clearness," though this was the slogan used when the station first signed on with 50 watts of power. Broadcasts had been heard over a much larger area than had been anticipated. Other slogans KFRC used in its early days were "Keep Forever Radiating Cheer" and "Keep Freely Radiating Cheer".

 

[jimmythebassett]

Callsign meaning K
National
Broadcasting
Radio

 

[KDUN1030]

It is sad to see when when one of the group owners dump the three letter calls, some of these call letters have great history associated with them. My station KDUN, said K-DUNE one the air is for the Oregon dunes along the coast. The other thing I have had a hard time understanding is why some outfits select these impossible call letter combinations.

 

[BossRadioDJ]

KNBR because KNBC was taken. KFRC Does stand for something, but I can't remember. KMEL was for CAMEL when it was rock.

KNBC was taken? The station was KNBC, and then changed to KNBR. This was discussed in detail in another thread.

The call letters "KFRC" stood for nothing. They were issued sequentially by the Radio Division of the Department of Commerce on September 9, 1924. In promoting the station, the phrase "Keep Forever Radiating Cheer" was used in the 1920s.

The station we know today as KSFO began as KTAB at the Tenth Avenue Baptist Church in Oakland, but was leased to a group of commercial operators who quite handily called themselves The Associated Broadcasters. In the Summer of 1935, KTAB became KSFO, indicative of the San Francisco-Oakland area that it served.

At various times, there were Bay Area stations with call letters that were meant to reflect a similar Eastern station -- KNEW (for WNEW/New York), KDIA (for WDIA/Memphis) and KPAT (WPAT/Paterson, N.J.), for example.

We also had a KVSM (Voice of San Mateo) here, which became KOFY/1050, with coffee cups for a logo.

Other old AM station call letters from the Bay Area have found homes farther north, including KSAY (to Fort Bragg) and KEWB (to Redding).

DJ

 

[PAJake]

http://nelson.oldradio.com/origins.html

This is one of my favorite sites on the net. For call letter info go to Call Letter Origin List, which has the meanings behind just about every TV and radio call letters in the US, Canada, Mexico and several other countries. The site also has tons of other radio info like the origins of "K" and "W", early station histories, and lots of other stuff that keeps me from getting actual work done while I sit at my desk at work.

 

[w9wi]

KNBC was taken? The station was KNBC, and then changed to KNBR. This was discussed in detail in another thread.

I think they did that because they wanted to use KNBC on their TV station in L.A.. At the time you couldn't have the same calls on stations in different cities, even if they were co-owned. CBS managed to get that changed years later, so they could change their KNXT (also in L.A.) to KCBS-TV without having to surrender the KCBS calls on 740.

KNBR could now change back to KNBC if they wished. (they'd have to get the L.A. TV station changed from KNBC to KNBC-TV) Since NBC Radio is a non-entity these days, I don't think they feel it's worth the paperwork.

I don't think KFRC was a sequentially-issued call. They started at the end of the alphabet in the 3rd letter in the West (calls like KDZA, KDYL, etc.) but stopped with the sequential calls fairly early - I'm pretty sure long before they reached R in that position. My guess is it stands for "F<something> Radio Company".

_________________________________________________

I didn't know that the Federal Radio Commission issued 3-letter signs until 1930, though. I didn't know when the "stop point" was for the 3-letter signs.

I'm quite confident WIS (Columbia, S.C.) was the last one, in 1930. From what I've read it was a bit of an anamoly with most 3-letter calls gone by 1924. A history of Wisconsin's WLBL shows four-letter calls were already being issued in mid-1922 in the East.

The FCC gives a licensee three choices for call signs, provided they aren't already taken, of course. Otherwise, I think they just issue an arbitrary set of letters.

Does the FCC still issue arbitrary calls?

It looked for awhile like they were doing so - American Family Radio got a bunch of WA-- calls for new stations a few years back. (WAMP/WAUO/WAUT/WAUV/WAWI/WAZD/WBIA in Tennessee, for example) Other new permits issued around the same time got calls interspersed with the AFR calls. But it looks to me like that practice has come to an end; while there have been some mass issuances of permits to the same applicant, they've ended up with calls that do not appear to be sequential. (for example, a bunch of "KHZ-" calls issued to stations licensed to the Horizon Christian Fellowship - it would appear "HZ" for "Horizon")

_________________________________________________

On a funnier note, I read somewhere that a station was given the call letters KUNT...True story

Right now there is no KUNT. ISTR those calls were issued to a low-power TV station in Hawaii, which promptly got them changed when they realized their undesirable implication.

 

[michael hagerty]

More accurately, they "realized" after they were caught. The same licensee also managed to fly KWTF (What The F***) past the commission for a station here in Arizona.

In Colorado, there's a KCUF (picture that on the front of the station van in your rearview mirror). They say it means "Keeping Colorado Uniquely Free".

What's amazing is that these are the call letters (apart from KWTF) that we teenage DJs used to joke about using 35 years ago.

---Michael Hagerty

On a funnier note, I read somewhere that a station was given the call letters KUNT...True story

Right now there is no KUNT. ISTR those calls were issued to a low-power TV station in Hawaii, which promptly got them changed when they realized their undesirable implication.


[/quote]

 

[1069_KIFR]

I used to think that KFRC was for Federal Radio Commission

 

[FightingIrish]

On a funnier note, I read somewhere that a station was given the call letters KUNT...True story

How about that station in Anaheim with the unfortunate longtime calls KLIT. Not surprisingly, they were a soft AC targeting... women!

And there is a college station in Morris, MN called KUMM (University of Minnesota-Morris). They used some of the same raunchy promotion and imaging that KOME did (i.e. "We put KUMM in your ear").

Oh, and on a cleaner and greener note, someone brought up KQKE in another post. They just got new calls on Monday - KKGN, which will likely stand for "Green". Seems they're going with an environmental thing for their new imaging.

http://ltradio.blogspot.com/2007/08/quake-goes-green.html