Special thanks to Ray Robinson and Jeff White for this week's special on the origins of callsigns.
Jeff: In recent months, we have presented features here on Wavescan that have mentioned various radio station call letters and their meanings. These have included:
• VOCM, Newfoundland – ‘Voice of the Common Man’
• HCJB, Quito, Ecuador – ‘Heralding Christ Jesus Blessings’
• WINB, Red Lion, PA – originally ‘World In Need of the Bible’, and subsequently ‘World Inter-National Broadcasters’, and
• WMBM, North Carolina – ‘Where Moorhead and Beaufort Meet’.
There are some interesting stories behind callsign meanings both here in America and in Australia, so here’s Ray Robinson to tell us more.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff. These days, domestically in the U.S., some stations hardly mention their call letters anymore, just gabbling them quickly at the top of each hour to meet FCC requirements, but they are often no longer used as part of the station identity. As in Europe and elsewhere, US stations are now much more likely to use a station name as their identity, rather than their assigned callsign. Here in Southern California, we have:
• The Fish
• The Patriot
• Power 106
• Alt 98.7
• Real 92.3
• Arrow 93.1
• Jack FM
• 94.7 The Wave
• Mega 96.3
• Go Country
• The Beast
• The Answer
• Relevant Radio
and so on – you get the idea, and that trend is increasing on both FM and AM. But once upon a time, station callsigns were the station’s sole identity.
At the dawn of radio broadcasting in the United States, callsigns were simply allocated sequentially. For example, the callsign for the famous Westinghouse station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, KDKA, was a sequential allocation with no special meaning or significance.
Likewise with so many other callsigns in the United States during that era. The letters WBZ for the Westinghouse station in Springfield, Massachusetts have no special meaning or significance, and neither do the callsigns for these early stations:
• WDY – Radio Corporation of America, Roselle Park, New Jersey
• WBL – Detroit News, Detroit, Michigan
• KGB – (Not the Russian Secret Service!) in San Francisco, California
• KJJ – which belonged to ‘The Radio Shop’ in Sunnyvale, California
However, it soon became acceptable for new radio stations coming on the air to request specific call letters, if they weren’t already in use. And so, many station callsigns in the United States do contain a hidden meaning, so let’s look at just a few.
For example, one of the early broadcasting stations in Chicago – WLS – which is still on the air to this day (on 890 AM with a talk radio format), chose a slogan that was very significant. The owners of the station were Sears & Roebuck, and to them the letters WLS stood for "World's Largest Store". Well, that might well have been disputed by Selfridges in London, but it was indeed true for the United States, and it could be argued that they were the largest mail order company in the world. Before the days of Amazon, Sears’ famous catalog was also the world's largest selling book, at 300 million copies per year. Only the Bible eclipsed that figure.
Not to be outdone, another station in Chicago was WGN. This station was owned by the Chicago Tribune, and the letters WGN stood for "World's Greatest Newspaper". And that station too is still on the air to this day, on 720 AM with a news/talk/sports format.
Another station with a grandiose stance was station WGES. These letters were interpreted to mean "World's Greatest Electrical School".
Many stations chose call letters that tied them to their home city. For example, the SL in KSL stood for Salt Lake (City), and the STP in the Minnesota station KSTP stood for St. Paul. Another station that was given a meaningful callsign in respect to its location is WWVA, which is interpreted to mean Wheeling, West Virginia.
Another smart use of call letters was for the station WAIT in Massachusetts. These letters, WAIT, stood for "We Are In Taunton", the name of their city of license.
A lot of other American callsigns are linked with the name of the company that owns the station. For example, WPRC in Pennsylvania was the callsign for the Wilson Printing & Radio Company. Likewise, the well-known WLAC in Nashville has a callsign that means Life And Casualty (Insurance Company). We might also list the rather obvious callsign, WSDA, which was owned by the Seventh-day Adventist Church in New York City, and KSDA, their shortwave station in Guam.
Here are a few other interesting callsigns and their meanings:
• KFUM, Colorado – Known for Unsurpassed Mountain Scenery
• KTHS, Arkansas – Kum to Hot Springs
• KWKC, Kansas – Keep Watching Kansas City
• WPG, New Jersey – World's Playground
• WTIC, Connecticut – Travelers Insurance Co.
But, a very similar story lies behind the allocation of radio callsigns in Australia too. There, the most popular choice was a callsign that in some way identifies the location of the station. Of course, they only had two letters to play with. The initial number, of course, identifies the state, but the following two letters could be chosen. The callsign:
• 2CA identifies Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory,
• 4CA identifies Cairns in Queensland, and
• 6CA identifies Carnarvon in Western Australia.
The callsigns 2BA and 2BE both identify the town of Bega in New South Wales, one an ABC government station and the other a commercial station.
Three very similar callsigns identify three cities, but also a little more:
• 2AD is in Armidale, New South Wales,
• 5AD is in Adelaide, but this callsign identifies both the city and also the "Advertiser" newspaper, which owned the station.
• The station in the island state of Tasmania, with a similar callsign, is 7AD, which stands for Advertising Devonport, the station's home city.
The callsigns 2AY, 4AY and 6AY identify Albury, Ayr and Albany. The callsigns 7DN and 8DN identify Devonport in Tasmania and Darwin in the Northern Territory, but the similar callsign 5DN in Adelaide is a mystery. No one seems to know the reason why this 1925 callsign was chosen.
The next most popular form of callsign for Australian radio stations identifies the owners of the station. For example, 3AK in Melbourne identifies the original owners, Akron Broadcasting Service; the call 3AR, also in Melbourne, identifies Associated Radio; and the call 2BL, in Sydney, identifies Broadcasters Limited.
At one stage, it was popular to choose double letters for the callsign of a radio station, and in various areas of Australia you will find for example, 2XX, 2JJ, 3GG, 4CC, 5AA and 6MM. The station in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, with double letters was 9AA, and this call did have a real meaning; the double letters stood for Australian Army.
In the FM band, stations are generally assigned callsigns with three letters, but the first medium wave station in Australia with a three letter callsign is 2WEB in Bourke, New South Wales, where the WEB stands for Western Bourke. The interesting thing is that this three-letter call was granted by mistake, but the station was then allowed to retain its at-the-time unique callsign.
These days a few other medium wave stations have also been granted three letter callsigns, though most of these have come about through the prior assignment of an FM callsign which the medium wave station is now simulcasting to achieve greater coverage.
Back to you, Jeff.
(Ray Robinson/Wavescan)
