Will Clear Channel change WOR call letters

[badjef]

I believe it has closed, now, but I was fortunate to visit the Sarnoff Institute and visit the Museum in Princeton in 2009.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

I want the artist rendition of Sarnoff helping Armstrong out the window. Was it a good painting ???

It must have been removed prior to my visit.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[Ai4i]

I want the artist rendition of Sarnoff helping Armstrong out the window. Was it a good painting ???

It must have been removed prior to my visit.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

That was a sick joke on my part 8)

 

[badjef]

I want the artist rendition of Sarnoff helping Armstrong out the window. Was it a good painting ???

It must have been removed prior to my visit.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

That was a sick joke on my part 8)

I got it. I could have seen it in a political cartoon of the time.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[RadioPro65]

Corporations (like Clear Channel) and listeners care little about call letters... in the PPM world, calls don't matter. Why change them?

Agreed -- but ... What about stations such as WOR (or Chicago's WGN-AM) which use their well-known calls as their identity, the same as a music station uses a brand like "Power" or "Lite" or whatever. In such cases where the calls are the brand, they DO matter!

The brand/identity used is what matters in a PPM-world or a diary-world. (Remember, PPM still ain't in every radio market in the U.S.) That brand/identity is what the "corporations (like Clear Channel)" promote, and the listeners remember. And what they sell to advertisers.

I agree that to change WOR-AM's call letters would make no sense -- unless CC was crazy enough to change the format to something other than News Talk, in which case it could be said they wasted a lot of money on the purchase from Buckley.

 

[OC3]

Flash...CC to change 710's calls to WABC! Film @ 11!

 

[wadio]

The "rules" about three-letter calls are not codified anywhere in Part 73, or elsewhere. They're handled in an informal, unwritten way by the callsign desk at the Media Bureau...but here's what I've teased out from following their precedent over the years:

Three-letter calls cannot be moved from market to market. If CC wants to move WOR, it can move WOR to another station in the New York market, but not elsewhere.

Three-letter base calls can be reused in other services, but only in the same market. 105.1 (or 100.3, or 104.3, or whatever) could become WOR-FM. 105.9 in Hartford could not.

Three-letter calls cannot be transferred to an unrelated owner. While CBS could allow some operator elsewhere to to put a "WINS-FM" on the air in a different market (or even in NYC), Clear Channel won't be able to allow a "WOR-FM" or "WOR-TV" under other ownership elsewhere. (However: an owner with three-letter calls across multiple services can sell them to different owners and allow them to keep the calls, so CBS could keep WJZ-TV in Baltimore and sell WJZ(AM) and WJZ-FM to different owners without a forced call change. This of course is a change in the rules from the days when WOR-TV had to change calls when ownership split from WOR AM).

Three-letter calls can be revived after being dropped...sometimes. It's very much at the whim of the callsign desk staffers to decide whether to grant a request. They've granted requests in the past (KHJ, KUT, KRE) and denied requests in the past. They are not governed by any black-and-white rule, just years of precedent and whatever leverage any given owner's DC lawyer can bring to bear. As a general rule of thumb, the FCC seems loath to restore a three-letter call to someone other than the owner/station who gave it up. KUT is an exception, sort of.

I happened to come across this at the NOAA weather education site: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/atmos/ll_ampm.htm

Fast Facts:
Stations are assigned a call sign beginning with "K", if they are west of the Mississippi River, and beginning with "W" if they are east of the river. However, there are some stations with only a 3-letter call sign, or stations with a "K" east of the Mississippi, or "W" on the west side. These stations have been "grandfathered" meaning they are allowed to keep their current sign until the station's ownership changes hands.

So according to this, CC must change the WOR calls! More evidence of one branch of Government not knowing what the other is doing?!

 

[Ai4i]

DID YOU KNOW ???
This west-east K-W split came about so as not to confuse broadcast callsigns with maritime callsigns which began with W in the west (get it, West) and K in the east?
The US also has exclusive use of the N series plus AA-AL.
Some small countries use number-letter combos, such as 4V for Haiti.
Some letters, such as "C" are divided among several countries (Canada, Cuba, etc).

 

[badjef]

The "rules" about three-letter calls are not codified anywhere in Part 73, or elsewhere. They're handled in an informal, unwritten way by the callsign desk at the Media Bureau...but here's what I've teased out from following their precedent over the years:

Three-letter calls cannot be moved from market to market. If CC wants to move WOR, it can move WOR to another station in the New York market, but not elsewhere.

Three-letter base calls can be reused in other services, but only in the same market. 105.1 (or 100.3, or 104.3, or whatever) could become WOR-FM. 105.9 in Hartford could not.

Three-letter calls cannot be transferred to an unrelated owner. While CBS could allow some operator elsewhere to to put a "WINS-FM" on the air in a different market (or even in NYC), Clear Channel won't be able to allow a "WOR-FM" or "WOR-TV" under other ownership elsewhere. (However: an owner with three-letter calls across multiple services can sell them to different owners and allow them to keep the calls, so CBS could keep WJZ-TV in Baltimore and sell WJZ(AM) and WJZ-FM to different owners without a forced call change. This of course is a change in the rules from the days when WOR-TV had to change calls when ownership split from WOR AM).

Three-letter calls can be revived after being dropped...sometimes. It's very much at the whim of the callsign desk staffers to decide whether to grant a request. They've granted requests in the past (KHJ, KUT, KRE) and denied requests in the past. They are not governed by any black-and-white rule, just years of precedent and whatever leverage any given owner's DC lawyer can bring to bear. As a general rule of thumb, the FCC seems loath to restore a three-letter call to someone other than the owner/station who gave it up. KUT is an exception, sort of.

I happened to come across this at the NOAA weather education site: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/atmos/ll_ampm.htm

Fast Facts:
Stations are assigned a call sign beginning with "K", if they are west of the Mississippi River, and beginning with "W" if they are east of the river. However, there are some stations with only a 3-letter call sign, or stations with a "K" east of the Mississippi, or "W" on the west side. These stations have been "grandfathered" meaning they are allowed to keep their current sign until the station's ownership changes hands.

So according to this, CC must change the WOR calls! More evidence of one branch of Government not knowing what the other is doing?!

Doesn't explain why Buckley was able to keep the WOR calls...maybe the last sentence does.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[fybush]

I trust a NOAA K-12 education website to tell me about FCC policy in about the same way I'd trust FCC.gov to tell me what the weather will be like tomorrow.

From Day One, the FCC (and its predecessors) have always allowed stations to retain three-letter calls through ownership changes. If it hadn't, the only three-letter calls still remaining would be WBZ, WHA, WRR, KUT and possibly WGN.

 

[WNTIRadio]

By those "rules" on the NOAA website, even WBZ would have had to change calls. It isn't owned by Westinghouse anymore!

 

[satech]

From Day One, the FCC (and its predecessors) have always allowed stations to retain three-letter calls through ownership changes. If it hadn't, the only three-letter calls still remaining would be WBZ, WHA, WRR, KUT and possibly WGN.

Don't forget WWV!

 

[badjef]

By those "rules" on the NOAA website, even WBZ would have had to change calls. It isn't owned by Westinghouse anymore!

Neither is KYW.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[fybush]

By those "rules" on the NOAA website, even WBZ would have had to change calls. It isn't owned by Westinghouse anymore!

Actually, it is. The corporate entity that was Westinghouse absorbed the former CBS Corp. and assumed the CBS name, but there was never a sale of the Westinghouse broadcast assets.

KYW, on the other hand, would have had to change calls in 1956 when the original KYW license (which had moved from Chicago to Philadelphia in 1934) was sold to NBC and became WRCV.

 

[badjef]

By those "rules" on the NOAA website, even WBZ would have had to change calls. It isn't owned by Westinghouse anymore!

Actually, it is. The corporate entity that was Westinghouse absorbed the former CBS Corp. and assumed the CBS name, but there was never a sale of the Westinghouse broadcast assets.

KYW, on the other hand, would have had to change calls in 1956 when the original KYW license (which had moved from Chicago to Philadelphia in 1934) was sold to NBC and became WRCV.

If you check the FCC site, a lot of the stations have the name of the DBAs as their licensee from the pre-absorbed transactions. I assume it makes it easier to divest those groups, should it become necessary, or desirable. It also protects them from risk.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!