Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!att!bellcore!rutgers!apple!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: wales@cs.ucla.edu (Rich Wales) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Radio Station Names (Australia, Canada, HCJB) Message-ID: Date: 20 Sep 89 20:58:39 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Reply-To: Rich Wales Organization: UCLA CS Department, Los Angeles Lines: 70 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 391, message 4 of 9 In article munnari!ucsvc.unimelb.edu.au!U5434122@uunet.uu.net describes radio station names in Australia: Radio station call signs are of the form N-cc for AM and N-ccc-FM for FM eg in Sydney (NSW) there are 2BL, 2WS, 2ABC-FM, 2JJJ-FM, 2-DAY-FM etc and in Melbourne (Vic) there are 3LO, 3AK, 3MMM-FM (triple M) 3-FOX-FM (the Fox) etc. The call signs of country stations usually reflect their location, eg 3GL in Geelong, 2PK in Parkes. This means that if you hear the call sign of a radio station, you instantly know which state it is from, and can hazard a guess at the area too. There is apparently no international requirement that radio stations all have call letters conforming to the international (ITU) plan. If there were such a requirement, Australian stations would have call letters starting with AX, VH-VN, or VZ. For that matter, the Australian call signs mentioned above overlap all over areas of the naming space reserved by the ITU for other countries. For example, 2PK (indeed, *all* calls starting with a 2) "should" be in Great Britain; 3AK ought to be in Monaco; and 3MMM belongs in China. Of course, Australia is not alone in ignoring the ITU list. In Canada, the radio and TV stations of the CBC all have call letters starting with the letters CB -- which, under international treaty, must mean that the CBC is really based in Chile. :-} (Canada doesn't own *all* of the "C..." call letter space, you see -- only CF-CK and CY-CZ, in addition to VA-VG, VO, VX-VY, and XJ-XO.) Is there a system in the USA? As Patrick (our moderator) mentioned, there is no comparable system for commercial radio or TV call signs in the US (other than the K/W split). However, amateur radio calls in the US *do* indicate the general part of the country; the digit indicates one of ten areas (which do *not*, how- ever, correspond to the first digit of our "ZIP" postal codes). This system isn't perfect, though, since if a ham moves, he gets to keep his call sign even if his new residence is in a differently numbered part of the country. Patrick added: In Ecuador, the starting letter is H; thus a very loud shortwave station heard all over the world from Quito, Ecuador is HCJB. And who will be the first TELECOM reader who knows what those letters mean? :) HCJB is run by an evangelical Christian group; the letters stand for "Heralding Christ Jesus' Blessings". Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department // +1 (213) 825-5683 3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024-1596 // USA wales@CS.UCLA.EDU ...!(uunet,ucbvax,rutgers)!cs.ucla.edu!wales "Then they hurl heavy objects. . . . And claw at you. . . ." [Moderator's Note: Yours was the only answer in the queue as of 12:30 AM Thursday. Therefore I declare you first, and the winner. Your prize is a free, lifetime subscription to TELECOM Digest. Lucky you! I suppose you also knew that WINB, Red Lion, is the World InterNational Broacasters, another shortwave station. What about WOR, KOA, and KCMO? Here's a real hard one for you: WNBC. What about KSL? Some are more obscure: the old WEFM here in Chicago was named for Edward F. McCormick, president of the Zenith Radio Corporation (where the quality goes in before the name goes on, remember?) back in the 1940's, when WEFM was the first FM station in the USA. No further messages re: HCJB will be printed unless the writer has something to say besides explaining the call sign. PT]