Radio call letters that have local significance

Surprised nobody’s mentioned WBAL in BALtimore, the station is a 50,000 watt flamethrower, I’ve heard it in NYC on clear days.

In Minneapolis/St Paul there are:

KSTP (K - St Paul)
KMSP (K - Minneapolis, St. Paul)
WLOL (W - Land of Lakes)
WDGY (W - Dr. George Young (founder)) - OK, that’s not a place, but just a bit or trivia I learned once.)

WLUP was mentioned. Prior to those call letters, it was WCFL, owned by the Chicago Federation of Labor. Who remembers Larry Lujack?

Yet you forget KSFO? :wink:

WSOY, “Y-103”, in Decatur, which billed itself as the “Soybean Capital of the World” for decades (we have a Soy Capital Bank), largely thanks to the presence of Archer Daniels Midland, until the city council decided to change the motto to, first, “Pride of the Prairie”, and then the slightly defensive “We Like It Here”.

There is also a Soy City Motel.

Here in SoCal there’s KOST. Because, you know, we’re along the coast.

Per the station’s wiki, it originally meant World’s Best Battery Maker, a reference to the original owners, the Mallory Company (later Duracell). After a year or so the owners sold out Mallory and changed the slogan to We Broadcast Better Music.

KOIL, Omaha, was started in 1925 by a motor oil company.

We have KHOU here in Houston, TX.

We also have KPRC, which started out doing farm reports. The PRC stands for Peas, Rice and Cotton.

And WTIC in Hartford is an acronym for Travelers Insurance Company.

There’s a station in Kemmerer, Wyoming, where it must get pretty cold in the winter.

KBRR!

Indianapolis must be the all-time winner in word callsigns, having had at one time or another WIRE, WISH, WIFE, WTHR (channel THiRteen), and WNDY (W-Indy).

If I recall things correctly, a Buffalo station found that it could use Roman numerals in the middle of WIVB, its callsign, to create the station’s slogan: “We’re For Buffalo.” I believe the station was Channel 4, as well, making the “IV” even more appropriate.

Lansing’s CBS TV is WLNS logically enough.

WOOD tv radio in Grand Rapids has the city’s reputation as the furniture city as its origin. The television was renamed WOTV for some time before reverting back to WOOD.

WWUP-TV in Sault Ste. Marie is named for the Upper Peninsula.

WISE in Wise, VA; operated by Virginia Tech. They purchesed it from UVA.

WAKE in Winston-Salem, NC; operated by Wake Forest University.

And before that, it was WBEN-TV, owned by the Buffalo Evening News. As far as I know, there is still a WBEN at 930 AM, but it hasn’t been operated by the News for ages.

WING in Dayton, OH; originally named for that city’s role in the history of human flight.

I never thought I would find occassion to post these two old Larry Lujack WLS commercials but here they are.

According to Wikipedia, a station in Atlantic City was supposed to get WALL, named for its seawall, but a mix up led to them getting WMID instead and WALL went to a station in Middletown, NY.

WBOX in Bogalusa, LA; possibly a reference to its cardboard, paper, and lumber industries.