How do you radio stations get their names?

How do you radio stations get their names?

While there are a few stations with just three letters, four letters is common today. Since the early days of radio broadcasting, the assigned “call letters” of radio station is that East of the Mississippi river, nearly all of the stations are assigned four letters beginning with the letter W.

Why do radio stations have to identify themselves?

The *reason* for requiring identification, at least in most jurisdictions, is so that if a listener hears something they believe breaches the local broadcasting standards (or more egregiously, the law) they know which station it was that broadcast it.

What do radio station numbers mean?

The numbers on your radio dial represent frequencies used by your local radio stations. If the FM dial is set at 89, the radio signal you hear is broadcasted at 89 MegaHertz (MHz), or 89,000,000 cycles per second.

Why do news stations start with AK?

Why? When the dividing line switched, some stations were made to change their call signs, while others weren’t. For about a year in the 1920s, the Bureau of Navigation decided that all new stations were going to get a K call sign no matter where they were located.

How many letters are in a radio station name?

Stations were allowed to choose the letters that followed the K or the W, and the combination was allowed to be three or four letters in length. In 1928, the Federal Radio Commission decided on a few rules that remain in effect to this day:

How do radio stations identify themselves?

Station identification (ident, network ID or channel ID) is the practice of radio or television stations or networks identifying themselves on-air, typically by means of a call sign or brand name (sometimes known, particularly in the United States, as a sounder or stinger, more generally as a station or network ID).

Why do radio stations start with ‘W’?

Radio stations east of the Mississippi River had to start their stations with ‘W’, and stations west of the Mississippi with ‘K’. There is some discrepancy though since radio stations that already existed before this rule was put in place weren’t required to change their name.

Why do radio and television station call letters begin with K?

The reason that radio and television station call letters begin with either a K or a W is because those are among the prefixes assigned to the US under international law. (Others include N and AAA, but these are not used for broadcasting).