Who wants to be WKRP?

[K.M. Richards]

Duly noted. I don't always follow written FCC written punctuation, though.

That's amusing in and of itself, because the FCC doesn't consider (AM) official punctuation, either. That's become an industry convention to identify AMs when it's not obvious otherwise.

But I have also seen full-blown arguments develop here over someone using the fictitious "-AM" suffix. That's why I try to be polite and stay matter-of-fact when pointing it out.

 

[TexasTom]

I think @NorthcoastRadio is correct about creator Hugh Wilson's intent, but I doubt CBS said anything beyond "just don't call it 'crap' on the show", leading to the station mascot being a carp. It was a thinly-veiled inside joke, understood by the radio industry but largely ignored by the viewers.

Besides, I shudder to think what a station "crap" mascot would be depicted as ...

Yeah, I can see it as an inside joke...sort of like the KRUD.COM comic strip that appeared online for quite a few years.

That said, the joke of the WKRP calls may also have to do with a bit of tunnel vision that can happen in the industry where stations pick a set of call letters to match a station mascot or positioning statement or whatever without realizing that it also sounds like something else.

In that regard, I can't help but think of K-Lite in Los Angeles, back in the day. When I was there on a business trip, I heard their legal ID and my thought was that K-L-I-T doesn't really spell "K-Lite" to most people but sounds more like an anatomical reference.

 

[The New Chico]

It's pretty straightforward, actually. Someone who has a station in a different service than yours (e.g., you are an AM and they are an FM) negotiates a deal with you to share the call letters, they pay you and then you provide a written statement authorizing your call letters' use which is filed in LMS as an attachment to the call letter change application.

The only legal restriction -- other than not being in the same service -- is that you have to have the appropriate suffix attached to your new calls. If you are sharing WXXX-TV for your FM station, you have to be WXXX-FM and give the calls that way for the hourly legal ID.

It's pretty straightforward, actually. Someone who has a station in a different service than yours (e.g., you are an AM and they are an FM) negotiates a deal with you to share the call letters, they pay you and then you provide a written statement authorizing your call letters' use which is filed in LMS as an attachment to the call letter change application.

The only legal restriction -- other than not being in the same service -- is that you have to have the appropriate suffix attached to your new calls. If you are sharing WXXX-TV for your FM station, you have to be WXXX-FM and give the calls that way for the hourly legal ID.

Just to clarify, we sold the calls for the same service. In this case, I was working for KHIT-FM, Walla Walla WA, and one day those calls went to 106.9 in the Seattle market. And we ended up with some truly lousy calls in exchange. But our owner, who was pretty cash poor, was considerbly richer. 35K richer, to be exact.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Just to clarify, we sold the calls for the same service. In this case, I was working for KHIT-FM, Walla Walla WA, and one day those calls went to 106.9 in the Seattle market. And we ended up with some truly lousy calls in exchange. But our owner, who was pretty cash poor, was considerbly richer. 35K richer, to be exact.

Ah. That wasn't clear. That was a case where you were paid to surrender your calls.

Never mind my entire explanation.

 

[The New Chico]

Sorry about that. I should have mentioned we had to surrender our calls. It was definitely an era when calls meant something. And thsoe KHIT calls were excellent for the times.

Now the KHIT calls are sitting in the Fresno and Reno markets. And it doesn't seem like any "big market" needs or wants them.

 

[xmtrland]

I remember that. Lived in the Seattle area and actually did some engineering for Bob Bingham and 106.9 and KBRO.

 

[KilowattKat]

Sorry about that. I should have mentioned we had to surrender our calls. It was definitely an era when calls meant something. And thsoe KHIT calls were excellent for the times.

Now the KHIT calls are sitting in the Fresno and Reno markets. And it doesn't seem like any "big market" needs or wants them.

They sure wasted their money, after spending $35,000 for the KHIT calls, they were dropped in the late 80's. Becoming KNUA with New Adult Contemporary.

 

[The New Chico]

Just a marketing expense. If they had "won" the CHR battle of the era they would have kept the calls long term and the brand would have been a strong one. But they didn't, and it didn't. (And if my aunt had bxxxs, she's be my uncle. And you miss every shot you don't take. Etc. Not every effort works, but that only makes it a waste in the rear-view mirror. You are a genius if it works, and an idiot if it doesn't...I have made LOTS of mistakes in my professional life but I learned. At least one of those errors, if not more, cost me over 35 Large.)

 

[KilowattKat]

Just a marketing expense. If they had "won" the CHR battle of the era they would have kept the calls long term and the brand would have been a strong one. But they didn't, and it didn't. (And if my aunt had bxxxs, she's be my uncle. And you miss every shot you don't take. Etc. Not every effort works, but that only makes it a waste in the rear-view mirror. You are a genius if it works, and an idiot if it doesn't...I have made LOTS of mistakes in my professional life but I learned. At least one of those errors, if not more, cost me over 35 Large.)

At first, they tried to go up against KUBE, KPLZ, and KNBQ with an automated jukebox CHR. By the time they got serious about going up against the big boys with the reboot, adding DJ's and the slight name change of 106.9 instead of 107 K-HIT, it was too late. I just feel the 35K would have been better spent on real marketing and talent. Maybe they would still be around...

 

[K.M. Richards]

Now the KHIT calls are sitting in the Fresno and Reno markets. And it doesn't seem like any "big market" needs or wants them.

Or the owner of those stations (Lotus, IIRC) is hanging on to them just in case. iHeart and Audacy have "warehoused" calls on other stations before. Or maybe no one has offered a price that Lotus will accept.

When Don Davis and I first ran a test version of The Eighties Channel™ back in 2014-15, the call letters on the station were KRKE, which are heritage calls in Albuquerque from the big top-40 station on 610 "back in the day". Don had been lucky in reclaiming them when the station in Aspen CO that had taken the calls in 1991 (after the original KRKE-FM gave them up ... the AM gave them up five years earlier) went permanently silent.

Between that experiment and our relaunch, Don parked the KRKE calls on the construction permit for what is now KEMR Moriarty for two years, then on 101.3 for five years after he acquired it in a three-way deal with Univision and American General Media. (In fact, we almost put the relaunch on that FM, but the translator Don was acquiring for 1100 actually has a better signal with 250 watts on Sandia Crest over the populated area of the Albuquerque metro.)

So it's not even unheard of for a smaller operator to "hang on" to calls by having them sit somewhere until needed.

 

[Miss Tuned]

That's amusing in and of itself, because the FCC doesn't consider (AM) official punctuation, either. That's become an industry convention to identify AMs when it's not obvious otherwise.

But I have also seen full-blown arguments develop here over someone using the fictitious "-AM" suffix. That's why I try to be polite and stay matter-of-fact when pointing it out.

Even Nielsen uses the -AM suffix in its ratings lists, e.g. KFI-AM.

 

[b-turner]

AM is not required by the FCC. When KVIL simulcasted their ID was KVIL Highland Park, KVIL-FM Highland Park (Dallas Fort Worth added to the end).

 

[K.M. Richards]

Even Nielsen uses the -AM suffix in its ratings lists, e.g. KFI-AM.

Is Nielsen part of the FCC now?

 

[K.M. Richards]

AM is not required by the FCC. When KVIL simulcasted their ID was KVIL Highland Park, KVIL-FM Highland Park (Dallas Fort Worth added to the end).

They could have also said, since they had the same COL: "KVIL, KVIL-FM Highland Park". I remember hearing a lot of AM/FM simulcasts in the 60's and 70's do it that way.

"KVIL AM & FM Highland Park" technically isn't legal, but the FCC stopped caring about that long ago, since the intent of the rule (§73.1201) in properly identifying a simulcast is fulfilled.

None of that, of course, means that any licensed AM in the FCC database has the prefix "-AM".

 

[Yabadabado1]

I remembered what I was going to post...

From 1986-1992, there was an Oldies station In Salt Lake City. KRPN. The legal ID was...W-KRPN Randolph-Salt Lake City. Clever

KRPN....could see their station liner now "We're Krappin' out the hits all day, every day!"

There's only three cast members alive today and as someone mentioned Tim Reid is one and Gary Sandy & Jan Smithers are the other two.

 

[TomásEstefan]

They had, for most of the 1970s and the early 1980s, been distributed via microwave to Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and western Texas, along with the other three independents in L.A. (KTLA/5, KTTV/11, and KCOP/13). But that was already in the past by 1989 and I don't believe they had aspirations to be on satellite as the core of their new schedule was -- and still is -- a three-hour block of live, local news in prime time (called "Prime 9 News" when it launched).

I read somewhere that the Disney executives knew they could keep the KHJ-TV call letters, because KHJ/930 had abandoned them after the "Car Radio" debacle in favor of the KRTH calls as "Smokin' Oldies". But they did some research and discovered that by then, the audience was indifferent at best and thought channel 9 was inferior at worst.

So they made a clean break with a new identity. It was a radical move at the time, since stations didn't take on an imaging name like "California 9". Although, as I said, it didn't last, it did last long enough to erase "KHJ-TV" from most viewers' minds.

Back in the 60s you could occasionally hear something like this: "Good evening, I'm Wayne Thomas, your watching KHJ-TV Los Angeles 9, It's 10 O'clock, Do you know where your children are?"

 

[KilowattKat]

According to this article, multiple parties are interested in the WKRP call letters, including one that's in Cincinnati.

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2026/02/24/why-how-wkrp-in-cincinnati-could-be-real-radio-station/88841791007/

 

[davideduardo]

In that regard, I can't help but think of K-Lite in Los Angeles, back in the day. When I was there on a business trip, I heard their legal ID and my thought was that K-L-I-T doesn't really spell "K-Lite" to most people but sounds more like an anatomical reference.

The owner's building on Sunset in LA had the TV station "name" and logo, the call letters of AM KMPC and, very clearly, raised metal letters of

"K--LIT"

After a number of incidents, the manager had to issue a staff memo threatening severe punishment for anyone found removing the hyphen.

 

[cc333]

The owner's building on Sunset in LA had the TV station "name" and logo, the call letters of AM KMPC and, very clearly, raised metal letters of

"K--LIT"

After a number of incidents, the manager had to issue a staff memo threatening severe punishment for anyone found removing the hyphen.

If I were the owner of that station, I would've gotten those calls changed ASAP to something that didn't spell out such an unfortunate word.

Another unfortunate call I just thought of is (and I'm sounding it out phonetically to avoid problems myself) "Kay Eff You Kay." Did any station ever have this call?

c

 

[K.M. Richards]

The owner's building on Sunset in LA had the TV station "name" and logo, the call letters of AM KMPC and, very clearly, raised metal letters of

"K--LIT"

After a number of incidents, the manager had to issue a staff memo threatening severe punishment for anyone found removing the hyphen.

If I were the owner of that station, I would've gotten those calls changed ASAP to something that didn't spell out such an unfortunate word.

Believe it or not, the GM specifically requested those calls when he flipped 101.9 from AOR to soft rock in 1989. It was supposed to mean "K-Lite".