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W vs K call letter for WZFG
- Thread starter jimbo
- Start date
T
The Beave
Guest
hey Jimbo,
If you are within 400 miles of the Mississippi, and the previous calls were
W--- Applicants can opt for a vanity callsign. Why don't you ask WDAY about their call sign as it's located in the same city.
If you are within 400 miles of the Mississippi, and the previous calls were
W--- Applicants can opt for a vanity callsign. Why don't you ask WDAY about their call sign as it's located in the same city.
The Beave said:
There is no such policy.
The WZFG calls are a mistake on the part of FCC clerks. My guess is the person at the callsign desk who was checking whether to approve the WZFG call didn't know where in Minnesota Dilworth is, and since some of Minnesota does lie east of the River, they figured WZFG was east of the river & a valid call for this station.
The K/W dividing line was set to its current location decades before WZFG came into being. It's not been "grandfathered" in.
WDAY, on the other hand, did exist before the K/W dividing line was set at its current location. When WDAY was licensed the dividing line was the ND/MT border. When the line was moved east, stations west of the Mississippi that already had W calls were allowed to keep them. How channel 8 in Devils Lake got WDAZ-TV I don't know, but K/W callsign policy has never been absolute.
T
The Beave
Guest
A concurrent post has the answer you have been seeking...
http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,106064.0/topicseen.html
http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,106064.0/topicseen.html
T
The Beave
Guest
lfuss said:
Larry Thanks for the link... So WZFG-AM falls under this catagory.
Owner requests--examples: WACO in Waco, Texas; WDBQ in Dubuque, Iowa; WMT (Waterloo [Iowa] Morning Tribune).
WZFG has vanity calls for their brand "The Flag".
But owner requests do not trump the rules. Those old ones you cite were grandfathered. The new Minnesota station was probably just an oversight at the FCC, like WPXS(TV) in Minden, LA and WDJD(AM) in Tafuna, AS. Both had to change to "proper" call-signs when the mistale was called to the FCC's attention.
Larry
Larry
Maybe the clerks at the FCC just don't care as much about the rules as radio geeks like us. :-[ 
;D
;DThey were WZFN, which was probably a FCC mistake with the city of license being Fargo suburb Dilworth, Minnesota, which the Miss. River goes through the state. They were able to change it to WZFG since it already had W call letters.
It's not codified anywhere, but the FCC has has a longstanding internal policy allowing stations in markets that straddle the Mississippi River to use "K" or "W" calls interchangeably. It started with 106.5 in Granite City IL (St. Louis market), which spent some time as WWWK before the FCC gave in and allowed it to become KWK-FM. In more recent years, it's not uncommon to see Ks east of the river and Ws west of the river in markets such as New Orleans, Memphis, St. Louis, the Quad Cities, Dubuque and the Twin Cities.
Since the Mississippi ceases to be the state line in Minnesota (and down in Louisiana, too), the FCC is especially relaxed about K/W rules in those states. Look at the Hibbing area, where there's both WMFG and KMFG (on the same tower, no less!)
Because the Fargo market was already somewhat intermixed with Ws and Ks, thanks to WDAY's heritage, and since the station is licensed in Minnesota, historically a split W/K state, it probably wasn't a big deal for the FCC to approve this request. I suspect it would have been a bigger deal had the station been licensed on the ND side of the state line.
Since the Mississippi ceases to be the state line in Minnesota (and down in Louisiana, too), the FCC is especially relaxed about K/W rules in those states. Look at the Hibbing area, where there's both WMFG and KMFG (on the same tower, no less!)
Because the Fargo market was already somewhat intermixed with Ws and Ks, thanks to WDAY's heritage, and since the station is licensed in Minnesota, historically a split W/K state, it probably wasn't a big deal for the FCC to approve this request. I suspect it would have been a bigger deal had the station been licensed on the ND side of the state line.
There was at least one station in the Memphis area, that when they moved their city of license from Osceola, Ark., to Millington, TN, they switched from a "K" to a "W" call letter combination. At that time, that was the only letter that changed. The other three stayed the same. They have changed their call letters, both before and since then, many times.
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