Our feature OKI Wanna Know tackles the little mysteries in life where your own digging hasn't uncovered anything. This week, a listener wants to know about something we say on the air all the time.
Bryce Kessler of Downtown is a longtime listener of Cincinnati Public Radio and was curious about something we say a lot.
"I am curious how radio stations get their letters: WVXU, WGUC," he says, "And is it the same for all news outlets — TV, radio, PBS stations?"
This is an easy one. The "XU" in WVXU stands for Xavier University, where the station first signed on. The "MU" in WMUB stands for Miami University, the original home of the station. The "UC" in WGUC stands for University of Cincinnati. You get the point.
John Schneider has been in the radio business since 1971. He's written books and articles on the history of the industry, and has a website: The Radio Historian. He says the letters, whatever they are, are call letters, or a call sign. They apply for both radio and television, commercial or public. It's only for stations you can pick up with a receiver and an antenna, as opposed to cable or internet.
And they're mandated by the Federal Communications Commission.
"The FCC in the United States has a process of assigning call letters to radio broadcasting stations," he says. "It used to be in the 1920s, the early 1920s, just three letters. That was changed to four letters when there were too many stations and they ran out of three letter combinations."
By international treaty, each country has a specific letter at the beginning of each broadcast station call sign. In the United States, it's either a "W" or a "K."
"The general process, although there are a few early exceptions, is that 'W' is east of the Mississippi and the 'K' is west of the Mississippi."
Other countries will either have a single letter, like "C" in Canada, or a two letter combination, or a number. And to get even more technical, the letters "N" and "A" are used by other classes of radio operators, like government transmitters and amateur radio operators in the U.S.
Schneider says the FCC assigns the call letters. They either pick random letters, or the applicant — the station — can ask for two or three letters that aren't being used by someone else.
"Generally they try to find some identification either with the community or with an image or a slogan," he says. "Something that makes sense rather than just a random call sign."
WVXU, WGUC and WMUB are all good examples of that.
He says sometimes it's just about sounding good.
" 'KLAX' [in Los Angeles] is easy to say. It just rolls off the tongue. 'WWWW' is not easy to say," he says. "But they called themselves W-4."
Today, WWWW FM, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, goes by W4 Country. Before that, WWWW was licensed in Detroit, and went by W4 Stereo, and W4 Quad.
Some stations have call letters that spell something, like WHIZ in Zanesville, WHO in Des Moines, or KEYS in Corpus Christi.
Some stations refer to themselves by four letters, like KICK, or KIDZ, or KISS, when the real call letters are completely different. Schneider says that's all about marketing.
"You can have a slogan for your station — Hits 101 [for example] — which has nothing to do with your call sign, which would only be heard in the legal identification at the top of the hour," he says. "Call signs, they're required to be announced once an hour for identification purposes by the FCC, but the rest of the time you can call yourself anything you want."
For instance, there is not, and never has been, a WKRP radio station in Cincinnati. There is a WKRP, but it's in Raleigh, North Carolina. It's a nonprofit, community station.
There is a WKRP TV station locally, but that's the marketing. The real call letters are WBQC.
Thom Moon of Dayton wrote in to add there are a number of stations that used their call letters as acronyms, including WOC, which was owned by the Palmer School of Chiropractics in Davenport, Iowa. The letters stood for "Wonders of Chiropractic." The famous WGN in Chicago stood for "World's Greatest Newspaper." WKRC Cincinnati started as WFBM, switched to WMH, before being purchased by Kodel Radio Corporation. The WOW call letters in the photo were in Omaha, home of the insurance company Woodmen of the World.
Schneider says stations sometimes change their call letters, especially if they're changing formats, going from easy listening to rock, for example. Other stations can apply to pick up those letters. But if it's a legacy station with only three letters, those are gone forever, since the FCC is only handing out four letter calls now.
You may have noticed airports also have three-letter codes, like CVG, which is a very abbreviated form of Covington. And there is also a WCVG licensed in Covington. Schneider says it's probably by design.
"Well, that sounds like what just a broadcaster decided to pick a call sign that identified the community," he says. "For example, TV station KLAX in Los Angeles named after the LAX code the Los Angeles airport."
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