Historical Moments In Radio
July 1996

Changing Call Letters

	Historical Moments in Radio .. stories of the rich and exciting
past on the a.m. radio dial .. and today we’re going to hear a little
about the matter of what a station goes through in changing call signs. 
Each month, we hear a list of call letter changes from Jerry Starr in his
column, AM Switch.  And it is a wonder that so many businesses are
changing their names.  After all, except for the telephone companies (and
they too are responsive to the FCC, come to think of it) can you name me
other industries where existing consumer- oriented companies change their
name from time to time?
	Of course, the opposite can occur in radio too.  A station keeps
its call letters but changes its product .. an all news station becomes a
Country Music station .. or an AOR station switches to One-on-One Sports?
	There was a classic case about a decade ago in Philadelphia .. it
happens this story dealt with an FM station .. WDVR for those of you near
the eastern Pennsylvania market. The manager of Delaware Valley Radio ..
that’s what WDVR stood for .. but nobody knew it I guess .. got some
focus groups together when he developed a unique beautiful music format
.. and decided after talking with such groups that the station should be
known as Easy-101.  So starting immediately, he changed the call letters
to WEAZ but instructed his announcers to repeatedly call the station EAZY
101.  Once an hour they would sneak in the legal ID .. but it was always
masked in such ways as "WEAZ Philadelphia Weather" .. the four letters
WEAZ were never isolated or highlighted.  
	Now, maybe it’s a coincidence, but the Arbitron Rating company
found listeners referring to "that station that starts with an E" and
other similar responses.  In fact, the only other station in town that
didn’t start with the letter W was KYW.  And two books after the call
letter change was made, EAZY 101 placed number one in the Arbitrons and
KYW placed number two.  And for several quarters after that, those two
stations shared the number one or number two spots in the Arbitron books.
	One consultant has pointed out that call letters are not going to
be effective in getting people to remember what station they’re listening
to, unless those call letters spell a word or tie in directly with a
meaningful listening term.  So it is better to have a one-word slogan, if
possible, to identify the station at all times except for the
once-an-hour legal ID.  
	Now I should stop for a moment and repeat what a legal ID is in
the United States.  I am going to use WFAD as the example.  There are
only four ways that station can give a legal ID.  The first is this: 
WFAD, Middlebury.  The call sign followed immediately by the city of
license.  A second way is this:  WFAD, 1490 on your dial, Middlebury. 
The frequency or channel can be said between the call sign and the city
of license.  The third way is this:  WFAD, owned by Pro-Radio,
Incorporated, Middlebury.  And the fourth and final way that is permitted
would be where the ownership AND the frequency are inserted between the
call letters and the city of license.  
	So it’s fun to hear all the different ways the legal IDs are
given;  there’s a station in Kansas City where it appears to be their
rule that the legal ID is always given by two different announcers .. one
ends a sentence with the call letters and the next announcer starts the
first sentence with the words Kansas City.  As many of you know, the
station in Pawtucket, Rhode Island uses a jingle for their legal ID and,
in a quick low-volume voice, inserts the word "Pawtucket" right after the
girls sing the call letters .. and it’s barely audible.  KABL once got
into trouble for ringing a rather loud cable-car bell so no one could
hear the word "Oakland" in their ID.  Where I now live, several stations
ID as being in Tampa Bay .. that is our region without doubt, but when
WFLA sings their awful jingle right on every hour these days, it’s a
perfectly legal station break since they are licensed to Tampa and, after
all, that’s the first word after the call letters.
	And how does one change call letters?  Well, it takes 2-3 pages
of legalese to give you all the details, but basically all a station has
to do is write a letter to the FCC .. a single letter mind you, not a
form in quadruplicate .. specifying a new call sign.  And if that call
sign is not already in use by another station, it can become effective in
as little as 45 days.
	I am reminded of another example of a station using a catchy
phrase .. again, and by coincidence, it happened in Philadelphia .. where
U.S. Route One is a major highway.
The station ID’ed as  "U S One" .. that’s all you heard all day long from
that station .. it turned out its call letters were USL .. and when the
letter L was written in the lower case on the side of buses and on
billboards, it looked for all the world like U.S. One!
	Ah yes .. radio broadcasting.  A wonderful industry.
	For Historical Moments in Radio, this is John Bowker.