I remember in some clips on Youtube that prior to Loma Prieta SF stations simply marked San Francisco in ID's But in the case of KTVU they marked Oakland/San Francisco in Station ID as early as 1980. I think some time after Loma Prieta All Stations in the Bay Area started using San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose in the ID's. Also I want to know if other Markets in other cities did the same thing here.
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When did FCC mandated that all SF stations must include Oak and SJ in Station ID
- Thread starter recto101
- Start date
recto101 said:
The FCC DID NOT MANDATE the stations to ID San Francisco Oakland San Jose for the station ID's.
KTVU has been licensed to Oakland all along. That being said. KTVU started out being KTVU, Oakland-San Francisco. Back in the 1980's KGO-TV was the first I believe... to add Oakland and San Jose to the station ID.
The FCC rules...state Call letters followed by (Optional Channel number) followed by City of License. After the city of license you can say anything that isn't obscene. If they wanted to, KTVU could say KTVU, Oakland-San Francisco-Brisbane or KTVU Oakland-San Mateo-Vallejo-San Rafael. I'm also convinced that San Jose was added to the station ID because of it's growth and fear that KNTV and KSBW could have potentially carved out a separate market for San Jose. Back in the 1950's San Jose had only about 100,000 residents compared to San Francisco's 750,000 and Oakland's 380,000.
It's just like in Sacramento for example. KCRA Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto or KOVR, Stockton-Sacramento-Modesto or KUVS Modesto-Sacramento-Stockton
In this case, it was possibly to keep Modesto from leaning towards Fresno. Also, back in the 1950's Modesto had less than 40,000 residents.
When the channels were allotted to the communities in the 1940's as were the FM assignments, The allotments were like this:
San Francisco-Oakland (Yes they were together at the time for allotment purposes:
2-4-5-7-9-11
San Jose
13
Sacramento
3-6-10
Stockton
8
Fresno
12
Later on after the realization that these channels were inadequate, the FCC imposed a freeze (1948-1952) for new stations. The UHF band was introduced ( Unfortunately TV's weren't required to have UHF Tuners until 1964...stupid move by the FCC).
Allotments in Northern and Central California and Looked something like this:
San Francisco-Oakland
2-4-5-7-9 (EDUC) -20-26-32-28-44-60 EDUC
San Jose
11
Sacramento
3, 6 EDUC, 10, 40, 46
Stockton
13, 31, 36, 42
Salinas-Monterey
8
Fresno
12, 24, 47, 53
Visalia
43
Chico
12, 24, 30
Redding
7. 9 EDUC, 16
Eureka
3, 6, 13 EDUC
Of course over time, the allotments have been modified, traded added and deleted. (E...36 moving to San Jose)
I did a ton of research on this back in 2003. David Eduardo has been generous to provide scanned copies of old Broadcasting Yearbooks among other things on his webstie Davidgleason.com...(Click on the Radio's Online Library link on top of the page).
Shouldn't SF be:
2,4,5,7,9,14,20,26,32,38,44,60
2,4,5,7,9,14,20,26,32,38,44,60
Newschannel4SF said:
I was talking about the older table of allotments.
Actually. 14 was first allotted to Modesto then San Mateo then San Francisco
J
JackBauer112
Guest
Back in the 1970's KRON had their legal ID as KRON-TV San Francisco. In '84 when their Golden Gate Bridge Legal ID debuted, it still used, KRON-TV San Francisco but a year later, it became KRON-TV San Francisco-San Jose-Oakland. It stayed that way through the early 2000's.
JackBauer112 said:
Again, all that is mandated by FCC are call letters and actual city of license. They could ID "KNTV, San Jose, pink elephants and lentil soup," and it would be OK. They mention the other cities as a little marketing gimmick to make it clear that they cover a wide viewing area.
The first TV station I remember doing it was KTVU in the 70s, ("Oakland, San Francisco") and I'm sure they did it so Bay Area viewers would know they weren't just serving Oakland and the East Bay.
e-dawg said:
Those are not COLs -- the city of license for KOMO, KIRO, KING, KCTS, and KMYQ (formerly KTZZ and KTWB) is Seattle only. The extra cities that they use in their IDs are not part of their cities of license.
In the Seattle/Tacoma market, I think that the only station with an actual dual city of license is KSTW, which was able to ID as "KSTW Tacoma/Seattle" back when the rules for station IDs were much tighter than they are today.
TexasTom said:
I'd bet that KSTW was licensed to Tacoma, but added Seattle because it makes the point that they serve the bigger, and better respected city - much like KTVU, Oakland, San Francisco. KTVU was using that dual ID back in the 70s, before anybody else...but I'm reasonably sure they were never licensed to both cities
Even back then, I think the TOH ID rules were basically the same - call letters, followed by city of license...after that, you can say anything that's not obscene.
KTVU, city of License Oakland. That is why they announce it as KTVU, Oakland-San Francisco.
KGO city of License, San Francisco, That is why they announce it as KGO San Francisco, Oaklamd, San Jose.
KOVR city of License, Stockton. That is why they announce it as KOVR Stockton, Sacramento, Modesto
KCRA city of License, Sacramneto. That is why they announce it as KCRA Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto.
They include the other towns/cities so to give a sense that they are part of the community. I had noticed that some radio stations had left out either San Jose or Oakland in their toh id's. Within a month, they were added back in. Why? Those communities must have felt like they were being ignored. I know you cannot please everyone all of the time, but when it comes to ratings you want to please as many people as possible. So throw that net far and wide.
Anyone remember 933, Young Country? (KYCY) They had a whole smorgasboard of TOH ID's. KYCY San Francisco, Oakland, Milpitas. KYCY San Francisco, San Jose, Alviso. On and on. Again attempting to make everyone feel like that is their station.
KGO city of License, San Francisco, That is why they announce it as KGO San Francisco, Oaklamd, San Jose.
KOVR city of License, Stockton. That is why they announce it as KOVR Stockton, Sacramento, Modesto
KCRA city of License, Sacramneto. That is why they announce it as KCRA Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto.
They include the other towns/cities so to give a sense that they are part of the community. I had noticed that some radio stations had left out either San Jose or Oakland in their toh id's. Within a month, they were added back in. Why? Those communities must have felt like they were being ignored. I know you cannot please everyone all of the time, but when it comes to ratings you want to please as many people as possible. So throw that net far and wide.
Anyone remember 933, Young Country? (KYCY) They had a whole smorgasboard of TOH ID's. KYCY San Francisco, Oakland, Milpitas. KYCY San Francisco, San Jose, Alviso. On and on. Again attempting to make everyone feel like that is their station.
1069_KIFR said:
I doubt anybody was feeling ignored because their city was left out of the TOH ID. Like KYCY in the 90s, The Wolf does the same thing, but they'll say something like "KBWF, San Francisco, San Jose and the East Bay" in different corn-pone sounding voices. They're just having fun in keeping with the high energy format of the station.
As for TV, it hardly matters anymore, since they don't announce the TOH - it's just superimposed on the screen for about 3 seconds.
K
kenrayc
Guest
Michael Rivers Kramer said:
Add to the list
Bakersfield
10, 17, 29
Tulare
27 Dumont Network
Lkeller said:
Wrong on both counts. The old FCC rules (prior to the eighties) were very specific both about what must be included in a station ID (call letters and city of license), and what was allowed to be included (station channel, ownership). Including cities that were not licensed to was a definite no-no, and the FCC had specific rules to allow stations to request the ability to do a dual-city ID. But you could not say anything that you wanted. When Gaylord Broadcasting bought KSTW, they had to meet specific requirements (which, unfortunately, I've long forgotten) before they could apply to the FCC to identify as "KSTW Tacoma/Seattle" instead of "KSTW Tacoma". So KSTW was licensed to Tacoma, but had to seek specific FCC approval to add Seattle to their legal ID.
It was Reagan era deregulation that allowed stations to start adding additional cities to their legal ID without first getting approval from the FCC.
TexasTom said:
I'm certainly not an expert, so I'll take your word for it. I guess that means KTVU would have asked for the same permission from the FCC to add San Francisco to their TOH. That's certainly possible, but I'm reasonably sure they never had a dual COL.
As a radio/TV nerd growing up in the 60s and 70s who paid attention to this nonsense, I would hear a lot of variation - the only consistent thing seemed to be call letters followed by COL, and even that wasn't entirely consistent. Though I concede I never heard other cities added to the legal COL until KTVU in the 70s.
For years in the 60s, the TOH ID for Top 40 radio station KRLA was "Serving Southern California from Pasadena; KRLA" The owners of KRLA (Jack Kent Cooke's corporation) had gotten into trouble with the FCC in the mid 60s for various nefarious deeds, and the station was being operated by a holding company under some kind of special agreement. You'd think they would need to be even more in compliance with all FCC regs, include the TOH announcement, but perhaps not.
In a similar discussion on another board, one of the veteran radio professionals (David Eduardo, I think) said that he knew of no stations that ever got in even the slightest amount of trouble for using the TOH incorrectly (at least occasionally), so we're probably making a bigger deal out of this than the FCC ever did.
I've seen some requests back a few years on the FCC website to standardize the COLs for some markets: one coming to mind is Providence, RI - making a request for all TV Stations in the Providence Market to Identify as WXXX Providence/New Bedford/Block Island - requested by the owners of WLNE, which is (or at least was at the time) licensed to New Bedford, MA... Not sure what the effect of these requests was...
I noticed that KDFC, KBLX and KDTV sometimes would include a 4th city.
KDFC would some times say San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and the 4th city like Stanford or Palo Alto or even Menlo Park.
While KBLX would include Berkeley, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose
KFSF66 then KPST66 tv said Vallejo, San Francisco Oakland and San Jose or San Francisco Vallejo, Oakland and San Jose in station ID's in the 1990's
KDFC would some times say San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and the 4th city like Stanford or Palo Alto or even Menlo Park.
While KBLX would include Berkeley, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose
KFSF66 then KPST66 tv said Vallejo, San Francisco Oakland and San Jose or San Francisco Vallejo, Oakland and San Jose in station ID's in the 1990's
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