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What Happens to Inactive/Defunct Call Signs?

Let me see if I can help:

The FCC won't issue new three-letter calls, period. Under certain circumstances, it will sometimes allow a station that once had a three-letter call to regain the use of that call. If you were to buy 1260 or 93.3 in San Francisco, you'd have a shot at persuading the FCC to let you revert to "KYA." Any other station? Almost certainly not.

As for four-letter calls, once they've been changed, they go back into the pool of available callsigns and can once again be requested by anyone, so long as nobody's using the base callsign. It doesn't matter whether the user of the base callsign has an -FM or -TV suffix or not, it's in their control as to whether anyone else can use that base callsign in another service. So because Audacy has KFRC in use in San Francisco on the FM band, anyone who wanted to use KFRC on AM or TV somewhere else would have to try to get Audacy's permission (and probably wouldn't get it).

As long as you give the correct legal ID (callsign, city of license, with a handful of optional insertions in between) once an hour, the FCC doesn't care what you call yourself the rest of the hour. Note that listeners to KFRC on 106.9 hear nothing but "KCBS" all hour except for the legal ID. You could call your station "KYA" all hour long if you wanted (and I think you'll find there have been several stations over the years that have done just what you're contemplating as homages to the original KYA.)

But...

Everything I've said so far is from the FCC's perspective. There are no "trademarks" at the FCC. Trademarks are a completely separate area of commercial law, and I am not a lawyer, so this is a very basic non-expert overview: a business can register a trademark at either the state level (in which case it applies only in that state) or at the federal level (in which case it applies nationwide). Trademarks last for only a limited time, and only if they remain in active use.

If you wanted to use old imaging elements, logos, and such, you also need to consider copyright law. The jingle companies were pretty good about copyrighting their material and there's a non-zero chance you could get into trouble for using that material in a commercial context, even half a century later.
 
And for the historians, in the past when a station wanted to change calls they filed ahead and had to notify all stations in a certain radius around the city of license of the intent. Any station that thought the calls could confuse listeners with their own calls could file an objection. So often a change in format was known by all a month in advance by competitors.

In late 1978 when I changed WSRA to WZNT people at the competition knew in advance that Z-93 was not going to be beautiful music any more.
 
@fybush That clears up a lot. Thanks!

As far as commercial usage of copywritten works, that's why I deliberately mentioned non-profit/educational use, because I think then fair use comes into play.

Or so I thought?

c
 
I'm not a copyright lawyer, either - but my understanding is that "fair use" is a pretty narrow lane, and I suspect the kind of sustained usage you're thinking of would fall afoul of that.
 
Correct. If an LPFM (non-profit by definition) wants to play Elvis songs, they still have to pay royalties.
 
cc333 said:
One of which was to somehow acquire the rights to KYA and bring it back as an oldies station on a non-profit/educational basis, similar to the KYA internet-only stream, but over the air.
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Do you already have the broadcast frequency? The hardest job is getting a broadcast frequency.

If so just focus on the programming. Don't get bogged down over the call letters. They don't matter.

Come up with your OWN cool name instead of trying to use someone else's heritage.

PTBoardOp94 said:
If an LPFM (non-profit by definition) wants to play Elvis songs, they still have to pay royalties.
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But only to BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC. Not to SoundExchange, unless you also stream.
 
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fybush said:
The jingle companies were pretty good about copyrighting their material and there's a non-zero chance you could get into trouble for using that material in a commercial context, even half a century later.
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The old jingle companies I'm aware of sold those copyrights to current companies. So just because a company is gone doesn't mean the copyright is abandoned.
 
TheBigA said:
Do you already have the broadcast frequency? The hardest job is getting a broadcast frequency.
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No, this is all hypothetical for now.

PTBoardOp94 said:
Correct. If an LPFM (non-profit by definition) wants to play Elvis songs, they still have to pay royalties.
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How well do I know! When I becan volunteering at an LPFM station in Ukiah, CA back in April 2008, I was told that they were current on ASCAP, BMI and SESAC (SoundExchange too, since this particular station also streamed).

2 years later (mid 2010), I come to find out that I was lied to, and not only weren't they paying the fees, but they hadn't been paying for more than two years!

What made me so mad is that not only is the station itself responsible for paying fines (which, at the time were pretty extensive), but each host, DJ and engineer had to pay fines too!

Fortunately, I cut all ties and got out as quickly as I could before anything happened, but fortunately nothing did, I guess because they were so small and their audience was basically nonexistent.

Anyway, the point of all that is that I understand the importance of paying royalties, and if I ever get into licensed radio (low power or otherwise), I will absolutely bend over backwards to make sure everything is done 10,000 percent legally, including registering with and paying all the royalty companies.

c
 
TheBigA said:
just focus on the programming. Don't get bogged down over the call letters. They don't matter.

Come up with your OWN cool name instead of trying to use someone else's heritage.
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OK. I'll just keep going with my Part-15 station then (no licenses needed!). I'm calling it Radio 1610 for now (I've also jokingly called it "The Little 1610" as a pun on the Drake-era KFRC, "The Big 610" ;) ).

c
 
Well there used to be a WABC-AM that stood for it's former owner Atlantic Broadcasting Company back in the 1930's and owned by CBS. This was until a network named American Broadcasting Company was formed as a result of NBC having to divest "The Blue Network" and it's affiliates like WJZ-AM.
 
cc333 said:
What made me so mad is that not only is the station itself responsible for paying fines (which, at the time were pretty extensive), but each host, DJ and engineer had to pay fines too!
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Yeah, uh, that's not legal.
 

West Coast Shortwave

Early Shortwave Radio on the West Coast
www.theradiohistorian.org


Here's another one KNBC those call letters were originally assigned to a Shortwave Station in Dixon, CA (in the Sacramento Valley area) during World War II and it broadcasted content from San Francisco's NBC Radio affiliate KPO-AM. This is one of the earliest known cases where a radio station is named after the network that owned them at the time. Note this is before KPO-AM became KNBC-AM and now KNBR-AM. Also this is before NBC sent the KNBC call letters to Los Angeles to the then KNBH and KRCA-TV where it has been ever since.


Interestingly KNBA had their origins as a NBC Shortwave station before a Vallejo, CA station reused KNBA on 1190 AM for local use.

As the war progressed, a veritable arsenal of shortwave transmitters was gradually being assembled around the country. In 1943, the government purchased 22 new GE and RCA transmitters, making a total of 36 frequencies aimed at Europe and the Pacific. KGEI received a new 100 kW transmitter, which went on the air as KGEX. A new 50 kW transmitter went to KWID and became KWIX. A Press Wireless transmitter was brought back to the U.S. from England and was installed in the McKay Wireless communications facility in Palo Alto to become KROJ. Additional stations added in 1945 were KROU and KROZ at McKay Wireless, and KRCA and KRCQ operated from the RCA point-to-point transmitter station in Bolinas. Further, NBC and CBS both finally agreed to build major shortwave complexes in California. CBS chose Delano as its site location and put stations KCBA, KCBF and KCBR went on the air in November, 1944. NBC opened its new facility in Dixon on December 27 and opened stations KNBA, KNBC, KNBI and KNBX. Another station, KRHO in Honolulu, had debuted just the day before. In all, seventeen West Coast stations were now rebroadcasting the OWI programs originating in San Francisco.
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Nobody has brought up "parking" well known valuable calls on a station owned by the same company in another market

WBCN FM was killed off by CBS, they parked the WBCN calls on an expanded band AM somewhere in the middle of nowhere (Carolina's) and they were still there when CBS and Beasley did some swapping of properties.

This kept a competitor from grabbing them and re-establishing WBCN in Boston

WROR FM was given up by ARS or some previous owner of 98.5 in Boston, and the calls were eventually grabbed by (Fairbanks?) the owners of WVBF that made a big deal of WROR returning, to the point of hiring former WROR jocks... and it fell flat on its face but the calls still remain today on 105.7 now in the hands of Beasley, after being bought out by Greater Media, who bought..... the list goes on.

The WROR calls don't have a lot of meaning to anyone under 60 but they are still in use and eventually the former WVBF after a flip to country and then to WROR did become a ratings winner
 
MRBIboredop said:
Nobody has brought up "parking" well known valuable calls on a station owned by the same company in another market
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That brings to mind the saga of WHFS. It was once a heritage progressive rock station in Washington DC (licensed to Bethesda). The letters were thought to stand for "High Fidelity Stereo." When the owner died, his estate sold the station, and used the proceeds to buy a station in Annapolis, where they moved the call letters. After a few years, the estate sold that station to CBS Radio. The format changed, and the call letters moved to West Palm Beach. When CBS Radio sold its WPB cluster, they again moved the letters to Tampa. Then CBS Radio was sold to Entercom, who traded the Tampa cluster to Beasley. Apparently Entercom was not in the call letter preservation business, because the call letters still reside on an AM station in Tampa.
 
cc333 said:
It was my understanding that that was optional?

My station has a range that barely extends past my house and I don't advertise, so maybe?

c
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From what I understand, a Part 15 transmitter that's strictly for personal use is not subject to Music Mafia extortion... oops, I mean license fees... since it isn't being used as a broadcaster. No different than playing a radio in your back yard. If your neighbors hear it, then it's not intentional.
 
MRBIboredop said:
Nobody has brought up "parking" well known valuable calls on a station owned by the same company in another market

WBCN FM was killed off by CBS, they parked the WBCN calls on an expanded band AM somewhere in the middle of nowhere (Carolina's) and they were still there when CBS and Beasley did some swapping of properties.
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Charlotte is one of the largest cities in the country now.

I remember that a little AM station in Conway SC got the letters WLIT in the 1980s when a Charlotte station didn't want them any more, and then it was WBIG when a Greensboro NC station that had tried to bring back a legendary station's letters and image decided to be rap.
 
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