how come all of the radio stations’ call letters begin with the leter K?
West of the Mississippi, call letters start with K.
East of the Mississippi, start with W.
North of the border, start with C.
South of the border – I know not.
I wish they had thought of some letter other than W. Because it’s too many damn syllables to say quickly. Worst of all is the one in Cleveland, WWWE. Try saying that in a hurry. The assignment of C for Canada makes perfectly good sense, but K and W? Seems totally arbitrary.
Here’s a great site about radio call letters:
http://www.ipass.net/~whitetho/3myst.htm
It’s got the whole history of how and why the letters were picked.
I was always under the impression that the “W” stood for “Wireless”. The K and C - I have no idea.
South of the border, start with X.
Cecil covers this in “Triumph,” pp. 176-177. I searched, but could not find it in the archives.
I assume the Call Letter column from Triumph of the Straight Dope has never been posted on-line is because it is badly flawed–see Cecil’s Lousy Call Letter Answer for more details.
And to answer the OP, beginning in the early 1910’s different countries were assigned different initial identifying letters for their radio stations. Most countries no longer use them for broadcasting services, but the U.S. still does. And, from the beginning, the U.S. has generally divided the broadcasting stations, with K in the the west and W in the east. (The original boundary between the two ran north from the Texas-New Mexico border. In early 1923, the K-W boundary was shifted to the Mississippi River).
As far as I can tell, K and W have no meaning, they were just randomly assigned to the U.S.
Hey whitetho,
Following that link, we see a brief reply from Cecil, promising a longer reply in the future. Did that future ever arrive?
-Fezzik
As far as I know, at 20-months-and-counting his final answer is still pending. But remember, it took 24 years for Uncle Cecil to correct the getting-to-first baseball column ( http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000818.html ) so these things sometimes take time.
On the other hand, it only took 31 days for him to issue an update to the brassière-sizing column. Not that I’m jealous – that was an issue of critical national importance, and who knows how many lives were saved by that timely response.
I’d guess an angry irrational mob surrounding the Chicago Reader offices would speed things up. Of course, it’s too cold this time of year. Maybe with the spring thaw…
They don’t. The United States is allocated (by the International Telegraph Union, or ITU) all callsigns beginning with the letters W, K, and N, as well as some calls beginning with A. The FCC has elected to use call signs starting with W for commercial broadcast stations east of the the Mississippi and starting with K for commercial broadcast stations west of the Mississippi. N is not being used for commercial broadcast stations in the US. There is a station in Oklahoma that petitions the FCC for permission to use an N-call every few years; the FCC consistently refuses that petition.
I’ve always wondered how they decide for stations in Minnesota located north of the mouth of the Mississippi – are they east or west?
The East-W/West-K rule does not apply to other classes of radio licensing; the FCC allocates callsigns within its ITU allocation based on other criteria. For example, all aircraft in the US are assigned callsigns that begin with N regardless as to where the aircraft is “homed”; ham calls are assigned to K, N, and W without regard to the location (location determines the digit portion of the ham call).
The ITU has allocated C to Canada and, I believe, part of X to Mexico. There obviously aren’t enough letters to go around, so some countries share a first letter with other countries and it takes more than one letter to tell what country you’re dealing with.
Minnesota, even in those parts which are divided by the Mississippi River, is kind of mixed up. For example, WCCO is located in Minneapolis, west of the Mississippi River, and KSTP is located in St. Paul, east of the Mississippi River. Both are pretty old stations, though, so they may predate the existing rules. However, the public radio station KNOW (FM) is also located in St. Paul. I think WCCO is just about the only “W” station that exists in the Twin Cities area anymore.
I liken it to living in that hazy area in the Rocky Mountains where both Hellman’s and Best Foods mayonnaise are sold (and advertized with almost identical commercials).
There’s also KDKA in Pittsburgh, which I guess was “grandfathered in.”
Have they stopped assigning 3-letter ID’s in favor of 4-letter? The 3-letter ones seem to be long-established (WBZ in Boston, for example).
Nevermind my question. I shoulda read Beadalin’s extensive link.