Why in U.S.A. radio and tv stations are have names kile KXPB?
 

Why in U.S.A. radio and tv stations are have names kile KXPB and not like Radio Big Apple or Station 3 Huston?

A 3 or four letter "call" is issued by the FCC for AM, FM, TV & SW broadcast
stations. K calls are almost always west of Mississippi river & W calls to
the east. We also have A & N calls for other things. In Romania you have
calls starting YO.
The Americas are where they are used often. Examples are
Canada C & VO
Mexico XE

The calls often stand for something. Examples
WLS Worlds Largest Store
WATD We are At The Dump
WARE in Ware Mass.
WTAG Worcester Telegram And Gazette
In US its law to use calls every 1/2 hr IIRC.
BTW airplane tail numbers usually use the same system.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

Yes, Zeno is correct. FCC (Federal Communications Commission) rules state that station ID must be given at the top of the hour (a few minutes cushion is allowable). Better to ID twice an hour or quarter hour. Call signs sometimes do stand for something, some of Zeno's are among the best. Sometimes a W or K with two middle letters are owned by the same family or were built by the same family. Example WLIL-AM, WLIK-AM (both built by Arthur Wilkerson in Tennessee, the latter still owned by Arthur's relatives)

:thmbsp: And my personal favorite from years back , in Quincy Ma. we had WJDA which was the initials of the man who founded the (AM radio) station , John D Asher . This was the first radio station I ever saw the inner workings of (transmitter , broadcast room , etc) and the man had a thing for Bells (like we have a thing for old TVs and Radios) and there were Bells of every sort everywhere in the station on display . (the Bells were never played on the air , but we had WJIB FM which used to play the Ship's Bell tone on the hour)

Some more call-sign meanings:

WJR - Jewett Radio and Phonograph

WJBK - Jesus Be Kind

WXYZ - Purposely picked because it was at the opposite end of the alphabet from ABC, the owner of the station at that time.

WOMC - Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb Counties

WDTK - Detroit TalK

WXOU - Oakland University

The rules also allow a longer delay if the ID announcement would interrupt a performance such as a symphony.

Wikipedia has a good article on call signs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_s..._North_America

The W... calls were grandfathered in, as stated, chosen originally for some meaning (e.g., WGN - World's Greatest Newspaper [Chicago Tribune]). The K signs originated with international assignment of K... to the US maritime service, but the FCC also started use for terrestrial stations. KDKA is probably the most famous station that is far east of the Mississippi, but most K... stations are to the west.

Since the digital transition, many TV stations (at least the seven stations in my area near Cleveland) identify themselves at purely random times. I don't know how they can get away with that. The NBC affiliate in Cleveland, for example, often runs one program right after another, with no breaks and no station ID to be seen; the other two network affiliates do the same thing. However, the COZI TV subchannel on channel 3.3 does in fact identify itself fairly close to the top of every hour, using the parent station's callsign, DTV subchannel number and location. Unless the other network stations in Cleveland are showing their IDs in tiny type at the top of every hour in a corner of the picture, as I said, I don't see how they are getting away with going from one program directly to another. Could it be the FCC has approved some sort of automatic station ID system, in which the identification information is actually in the vertical blanking interval and so is invisible to the viewers? :scratch2:

or locally....KBTM...Beard's Temple of Music. Station first signed on in the 20's!

There's no such thing as a vertical blanking interval in digital TV broadcasts; the virtual channel ID is carried in metadata - without it, the TV set could only identify the RF channel it's tuned to, and the broadcasters definitely want their virtual channel number identified to the viewer instead. The requirement to identify with an FCC approved virtual channel became regulation with the adoption of the ATSC standard by the FCC. There have been a few cases where the FCC has had to rule on virtual channel number disputes between broadcasters, but there are written regulations in place about how they get assigned that take care of most cases. Originally, most stations were simply assigned their original analog RF channel number (which they had branded themselves with), but it got more complex with spectrum auctions and repacking.

I don't know or recall if the rules requiring ID as part of the video and audio was dropped with the switch to digital.

I always thought the abbreviation for the call sign of the Chicago public TV station was really classy and cool: WTTW - your Window To The World.

Some stations do try to brand themselves away from their call letters...Especially on FM radio.

Interesting thread. Here in England there's no equivalent, all national BBC radio stations are named Radio's 1,2,3,4,5,6, Asian & World Service. Then you have BBC Radio's Scotland, Wales, Ulster, Cymru. (Welsh language station) Then local BBC stations such as Radio's Nottingham, London, Norfolk, Derby etc. BTW no adverts are carried on any BBC radio or TV station. Commercial radio stations mostly have have names like Gold, Magic, Heart, Capital, GEM etc, some also have lettters &/or numbers e.g. 3CR & LBC...

TV stations are BBC's 1.2.3 (online only).4, NEWS, ITV's 1,2,3,4, Channel 4, More4, E4, Film4, Channel 5, 5USA, Quest, Dave, CBS & dozens more I can't remember. Some TV stations seem to come & go at random, e.g. VIVA & TFN have vanished. We have a local station called 'NOTTINGHAMSHIRE TV' usually shortened to NOTTS TV...

In Romania public network had Programul 1, 2, 3. 1 became Romania Actualităţi (Romania News) and 3 Radio 3 România Tinneret (Radio 3 Romania Youth) - the laters is now only online now - C.N.A. (Consiliul Naţional al Audiovizualului = The National Council of Audio and image), the somehow Romanian equyvalent of F.C.C. (we aslo have The Ministry (Department) of Telecomunicatons) stipulated that an company can only have maximum 3 on-air national networks and there decided that România Actualităţi, România Cultural and Antena Satelor (Antena of the Villages) would be the 3 national networks.

Many TV stations and most radio stations here do also have "advertised" names such as the ones you mentioned. "Wild 94.9", "The Bone 107.7", "The Ticket", and "K-Fox" are radio examples near my home, and "Action 36" is one local TV station example. They all do have call signs as well.

I'd like to add WOC in Iowa for World Of Chiropractic since the Palmer School of Chiropractic founded the station, WCFL in Chicago was founded be the Chicago Federation of Labor, a union and KFKB in Kansas was "Kansas Folks Know Best." The last station was the first station used by a Dr. Brinkley who hawked the power of goat's glads to cure illnesses. Well, we have WTOV-TV Steubenville, Ohio for "Television of the Ohio Valley," it used to be WSTV-TV for "Steubenville TV." WWVA is for "Wheeling West VirginiA." In Pittsburgh we have (had) two K stations, or three if you count KDKA-FM, KDKA-AM nd KQV but I think they were more random, at least in KDKA's case, I think originally, KDKA was going to be assigned to a ship. KQV is dark now but there is someone who bought it and will resurrect it later this year.