TV and radio station call letter history and long-distance viewing

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

There was a mention in another post about the well-known PBS station WGBH in Boston and how it got its “name”. Its original antenna was on Great Blue Hill (note the initials) - a 635-foot hill in suburban Boston.

WRGB in Schenectady NY (15 miles west of Albany) - under various call letters since its start in 1928. I had always though that the “RGB” referred to “red, green, blue” - the three primary colors - reflecting the development of (color) TV at the nearby GE plant. But no - it was named (in 1942) for a GE VP - Walter Ransom Gail Baker (1892-1960).

On January 4, 1954, it moved from channel 4 to channel 6 to alleviate interference from NYC’s WNBC-TV (then known as WRCA-TV) and Boston’s WBZ-TV. However - six days later, CBMT-TV in Montreal came on the air - also on channel 6. Taking straight-line distances into consideration - the distance to Boston is 150 miles; to NYC is 145 miles; to Montreal is 186 miles. I wonder if the then-channel 4 was viewable from Montreal prior to 1954 (when there was only one local channel - CBFT, channel 2).

WMTW-TV - channel 8 (now based in Portland ME - originally its studios were in Poland Spring ME (29 miles from Portland). The “MTW” referred to Mount Washington NH where its transmitter was for many years (about 60 miles west of Poland Spring). Although Mt. Washington is 130 miles from Montreal, WMTW was viewable over-the-air in Montreal with a good antenna, until another channel 8 was allocated to Cornwall ON in the early 60’s.

Has anyone else experienced over-the-air viewing at well over 100 miles? I can almost always get a clear 100-mile picture with a small antenna - sometimes further on a cold, clear, winter night.

2

There is a hobby associated with this:

3

Heard about this long ago and following tips tried to pick up television signals late at night. Never got any. It takes far more patience than I had, and some serious equipment that I didn’t have. Even HAM operators I knew who tried scanning for radio and TV signals told me they were unsuccessful. Some said the hilly region we lived in was a problem and this would work better out in the plains but no explanation was provided.

BTW: The search hobby is more for signals much further out of range than just 100 miles.

4

If you can explain WJZ in Baltimore, I’ll die a happy man.

Back in late '70s Balto, we use to occasionally get some TV station from NYC, but that was 3:00 in the morning on a Saturday night.

5

Can do, sorta. Keep reading.

My father (who was connected to the Baltimore broadcasting community) told me that the city’s WFBR stood for First Broadcasting Radio. I haven’t found confirmation for that.

Also, WGMS, the classical station in Washington, DC (ceased operating in 2007), stood for Washington’s Good Music Station.

When WJHU, the NPR station of Johns Hopkins University, changed its call sign to WYPR in 2002, they used the phrase We’re Your Public Radio. A friend suggested they wanted the sign for the phrase, but I looked it up and found that by that time virtually every other WxPR sign had been taken by other public radio stations.

Re: WJZ. Wikipedia entries for some radio a d TV stations have a field for “Call Sign Meaning.” The entry for WJZ reads: " Taken from former sister station WJZ-TV, which took the callsign in honor of the former WJZ (AM) in New York City, now WABC."

6

My uncle was a broadcaster and a DJ at WPGC-FM (Prince George’s County) in the 60’s.

7

Yeah, I’ve heard “First Broadcasting Radio,” too, also, “First Baltimore Radio,” and the Wikipedia entry is not much help, either.

My Dad, as well, was in Balto radio briefly around that time frame (late '50s - early '60s); I think he was mostly the techie side of things. Still renews his broadcasting(?) license.

8

My college radio station was KAOS, apparently named in reference to the spy organization on Get Smart. I was on the air a few times.

9

The low-wattage radio station at which I was a disc jockey in college, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was WLHA; the initials stood for Lakeshore Hall Association (the dormitory association which operated the station). It went defunct sometime in the late '80s or early '90s, but has been revived in recent years, primarily as a streaming radio station, and is largely operated by (and DJed by) former DJs at the original station.

When I was growing up in Green Bay, we had four TV stations:
WBAY: named for the “Bay” in Green Bay
WFRV: named for the “Wonderful Fox River Valley”
WLUK: renamed from an earlier call sign, in reflection of the station’s slogan, “Lucky 11” (it was on VHF channel 11)
WPNE: as far as I can tell, not chosen for any particular meaning

10

There’s a persistent story that KMOX in St. Louis got its call letters because its original transmitter was in Kirkwood, MissOuri and the station signed on Christmas Eve.(X)

In fact, KMOX management has continually insisted that the originals wanted KVSL, for “Voice of St. Louis.” When that sign was unavailable, they applied for KMO. That call sign was also unavailable, so they settled for KMOX as a third choice. Despite management’s consistent explanation since 1927, the myth continues.

11

As far as the “long distance viewing” part of the OP’s question: before we moved to Green Bay (in 1975), my family lived in the far western suburbs of Chicago. One Sunday morning, my sister and I were up before our parents, and turned on the TV: on a station which normally was just static, we were able to pick up a show. The video was a little fuzzy, but the audio was clear, and I remember there being a blonde woman singing while standing outdoors (in retrospect, it was probably some sort of religious programming).

We were able to watch it long enough to see the station ID at the top of the hour, and it was coming from a station in the “Quad Cities” area, on the Illinois/Iowa border, which meant it was about 125 miles, as the crow flies, west of us. We were never able to pick up a signal on that station again, so there must have been some funky atmospheric conditions that morning, which let the signal travel that far.

12

At one time during my childhood, CBMT was the only (English-language) TV station available. Cable didn’t exist then, and my parents didn’t want the sort of outdoor antenna needed to get US stations, although I was able, by manipulating the rabbit-ear antenna, to get a snowy but usually acceptable picture from the NBC affiliate WPTZ in Plattsburgh, NY, on channel 5. The CBS affiliate WCAX on channel 3 in Burlington, VT, was much more difficult, but sometimes achievable. There was a third station on channel 8, which I think must have been ABC, that was barely achievable even with an outdoor antenna. In any case, imagine my childhood delight when a new local television station arrived in town, CFCF channel 12, part of the fledgling CTV television network, and along with it, a wealth of new programs! It felt like Christmas morning!

Much more recently in the era of digital TV, when I still lived in Toronto, I bought a flat style UHF outdoor antenna but never mounted it outdoors – I put it in the living room window behind vertical blinds. I mainly got it for reliable reception of local stations, but amazingly, I was able to get all four US networks from Buffalo and the surrounding area, a distance of as much as 80 miles. This was due to a couple of happy coincidences – the positioning of the antenna in the window happened to be pointing in almost exactly the right direction, there was unobstructed green space in front of the house, and of course the unobstructed expanse of Lake Ontario all the way to Buffalo.

BTW, speaking of call letters, in another thread I mentioned the ITU prefix codes. The US is assigned a particularly large set of individual letters and letter pairs, including K, W, and N, the first two used for broadcast call signs and the latter for aircraft registration. Canada is assigned the range between CF and CK, which is why all broadcast station call signs start with those letters.

But wait! How about CBC network radio and TV stations all over the country having call signs starting with “CB”, like the aforementioned CBMT in Montreal? That belongs to Chile, which is assigned the range CA-CE! The answer is that CBC executives approached Chilean authorities and nicely asked if they could borrow “CB”, and entered into an agreement to do so.

Off topic but perhaps interesting to pedants like me, similar to the way that the US uses “N” as the prefix to all aircraft registration, Canada used to use “CF” followed by three letters. When there were too many airplanes for this to work, it was modified slightly. Rather than CF-xxx, it now became either C-Fxxx or C-Gxxx and also C-Ixxx for ultra-lights.

13

WALB is from Albany GA.

KALB on the other hand, is from Albuquerque NM.

14

Two big radio and TV stations in Chicago are WLS and WGN. WLS was owned by the Sears department store chain and stands for World’s Largest Store. WGN was owned by the Chicago Tribune newspaper and stands for World’s Largest Newspaper.

15

“Greatest,” not “Largest,” but yes. :slight_smile:

16

Ham radio buffs in America normally are assigned callsigns beginning with K, but N and W are also available as sort of vanity plates.

Group B — Advanced Class. Callsigns in Group B are 2-by-2 callsigns that begin with K, N, or W, such as KB6NU. These callsigns were originally issued to amateurs when they passed the Advanced Class exam. I got this call sign when I passed the Advanced Class exam many moons ago.

Group C — General, Technician, and Technician Plus Classes. Callsigns in Group C are 1-by-3 callsigns that begin with the letters K, N, or W. An example of a call sign in this group is W8ABC.

When I was in high school, some of us used our transistor radios late at night to pull in distant radio station callsigns. There were even publications that listed all the stations, signs, power, and frequencies. I picked up several hundred over the years.

17

TV and FM are line-of-sight. If your antenna can “see” the station’s broadcast antenna without obstruction, you can probably pick up the station, at least somewhat. Of course, since TV went digital, you either get a clear picture or not. There’s no watching a picture with a little “snow” in it in the digital age. Where I live, the TV stations are all in different directions. One of them, only about 25 miles away, is blocked by a small mountain to the north of me. Forget about watching them. Pre-digital, you could easily watch a TV station from 100 miles away with a good outdoor antenna. These days, long distance viewing beyond 50 miles or so is a rarity, unless you live on a mountain and have a tall outdoor antenna.

Someone asked about Baltimore.

What is now 1590 WFBR in Baltimore is not the original WFBR, which was on 1300kc for decades. The current WFBR, licensed to Glen Burnie, simply applied for those calls when 1300 dropped them, because they were still well-known call letters. The “real” WFBR went through several sets of call letters and is now WJZ, having picked up those calls when it was owned by CBS, which owned WJZ-TV Channel 13. Now owned by a different company, the AM station was permitted to keep those calls. There is also a WJZ-FM, but like the AM, it is not affiliated with WJZ-TV.

WJZ-TV was originally WAAM, but when it was purchased by Westinghouse, they changed the calls to WJZ, call letters which had been connected to a New York radio station they once had owned, which had since changed its calls to WABC.

In the early days, call letters were sequentially assigned by the FCC. Later, stations could request call letters, if they were available. Today, call letters mean little or nothing to listeners or viewers. Many TV stations simply call themselves “ABC 2” or “CBS 13.” However, I worked for a TV station whose call letters were so ingrained in the public consciousness after decades of being the most prominent station in the market, that they are still known by their call letters, not by their network affiliation.

Radio stations often just call themselves by a name/frequency combination, like “Hot 104.5,” and only give their call letters once an hour as a legal I.D.

18

Calls starting with A are also available to US extra-class license holders.

19

You forget the 3rd one, WBBM: World’s biggest BM.

(They claim it stood for We Broadcast Better Music).

20

WJHU became an NPR station??? Hell, in 1975 they broadcast from the basement of the Alumni dorms (all 2 buildings of them), and couldn’t even be picked up on the radio in some of those dorm rooms!