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WTBS calls snatched up by Prism Broadcasting

L

livingfruitvirus

A few weeks old, but no talk around here.

The WTBS calls are now on another station in Atlanta. The LPTV channel 26 formerly known as WANX, continuing the tradition of taking the calls of a local full service station that dropped them, snatched them up and now displays them. WTBS also has a construction permit to direct its signal everywhere but the west.
 
livingfruitvirus said:
A few weeks old, but no talk around here.

The WTBS calls are now on another station in Atlanta. The LPTV channel 26 formerly known as WANX, continuing the tradition of taking the calls of a local full service station that dropped them, snatched them up and now displays them. WTBS also has a construction permit to direct its signal everywhere but the west.
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I wonder if this LPTV is callsign squatting (holding on to them to sell to the highest bidder, similar to what people do with internet domain names).

In that case, where is WVEU-LP? WAII-LP? WLWA-LP? WTCG-LP?, WJRJ-LP? WHAE-LP? (I know WLTV is on the Univision station in Miami, and WETV is in use somewhere).

I guess those MIT students are never going to get their just desserts.
 
Interesting. So could anybody have taken the WTBS call letters, like a radio station or anybody who wanted them?
 
Anybody who held a license or construction permit to a radio or television station located east of the old K/W dividing line (full-service station; east of the Mississippi River for LPFM? and LPTV) could have claimed the calls.
 
This is only partially true. It's easy for an operator with multiple licenses to "park" a set of calls for future use or transfer, simply by filing simultaneously to change the desired calls (WTBS to WPCH-TV, for instance) and to change another license to the discarded calls. It actually happens quite often. In fact, the WPCH calls are a good example - when CC dropped them in Atlanta, it filed simultaneously to put them on another station over in Augusta.

A licensee can even take money from another licensee to coordinate such a transfer.

As for the gang up at MIT, whence came the WTBS calls 28 years ago, they were well aware that the callsign would again be available...but they've established a very strong identity as WMBR over nearly three decades, and the feeling was that nobody really remembered them as WTBS anymore, anyway.
 
smedge2006 said:
I don't think you can sell call signs like domains.
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Sure you can. That's how Turner got WTBS in the first place. It belonged to a radio station in Massachusetts first.
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Turner donated money to MIT for a new transmitter for their public station, and MIT agreed to drop the calls so Turner could have them. It's not technically the same as a sale. If one could callsign squat, calls like WFOX would have been bought from their owners.
 
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