Radio-station call letters are just confusing
 

Dec. 29, 2004

OK, OK, so maybe if you were in your car and traveling at the speed of sound
you could hear the rear speakers. OK? But you wouldn't be able to hear sound
behind the car.

Let's just drop it, shall we? I'm not feeling so hot anyway, and I just want
to get on with things.

And we have important business today. It's a long story, but depending on
the answer to today's question, some guy might have to apologize to his
boss' 15-year-old son in front of the whole office, and naturally he doesn't
want to have to do that. ement

This is the matter at hand:

Is it true that all radio and TV stations east of the Mississippi have call
letters beginning with "W," and all stations west of the Mississippi have
call letters beginning with "K"?

The boss' son says this is so, and the other guy says it is not. And he is
correct so he doesn't have to apologize to the kid in front of everybody.

The kid's mistake was in using the word "all."

In 1912, when the federal government started licensing land-based radio
stations, it was decided that Western stations should get the K designation
and Eastern stations would be W's. The boundary line started at the
Texas-New Mexico line, and then ran north, jogging along the eastern edge of
Colorado, and then along the eastern edges of Wyoming and Montana.

This worked out just fine until 1923 when the Federal Communications
Commission decided the K-W boundary should be the Mississippi River. Don't
ask me why they did this. I don't know.

And don't ask me about the parts of Minnesota north of the headwaters of the
Mississippi. I do know the answer to that, but I don't want to get too far
off the subject here.

Anyway, when they decided to move the boundary to the Mississippi, they also
said that existing "W" stations in the regions between the old and new
boundaries could keep their original call letters if they wanted to. And
later radio stations that branched out into television were allowed to use
their radio call letters for the new medium.

Hence, we now have in Oklahoma City radio stations WKY and WWLS along with a
host of "K" stations. In Iowa, WOI broadcasts in AM and FM from Ames, while
many of the state's other stations have "K" designations.

Those are just a few examples. There are more, maybe not a lot, but enough
to keep this guy from eating crow in front of the whole office.

(Reach Thompson at or (602) 444-8612).

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepu...229clay29.html