Radio Station Call Letters- Where did they come up with them

[KEVIN_224]

Sounds like WRCH-FM 100.5 of New Britain/Hartford, CT. The station was known as Rich FM-100 in their days of beautiful music. They became Lite 100.5 in 1989, when they changed to an adult contemporary format. It has more of a pop sound now, but still not quite Hot AC like sister station WTIC-FM 96.5 of Hartford (96.5-TIC).

[hotdogPi]

Sounds like WRCH-FM 100.5 of New Britain/Hartford, CT. The station was known as Rich FM-100 in their days of beautiful music.

That makes no sense. If you set the station to 100, you would get a weak signal for 99.9 or 100.1, if either one existed. Definitely not 100.5.

[lepidopteran]

From the midwest:

Detroit:
WDIV-TV Channel 4, Detroit+IV (Roman numeral 4)
WKBD-TV Channel 50, Kaiser Broadcasting Detroit (later became Field Communications)

Toledo:
WTOL-TV Channel 11, short for TOLedo, also the airport code
WTOD-FM 106.5, also for TOleDo
WXEZ-FM 105, "EZ" listening, changed call letter at least twice

Dayton:
WHIO (radio and TV), presumably OHIO except for first letter
WDTN-TV Channel 2, short for DayToN
WRGT-TV Channel 45, for the hometown of the WRiGhT Brothers (they were not from NC, contrary to popular belief)
WDAO, while probably named for the city and state combination, there was a widespread joke, since it largely played an African-American format, that it stood for "White Days Are Over".
WVUD, the Voice of UD (Univerity of Dayton).  Those same call letters are now used a radio station from the University of Delaware!
WPTD, Channel 14, Public Television of Dayton (paired with WPTO in Oxford; recognize the pattern here?)

Columbus:
WCMH-TV Channel 4, CMH are the airport's call letters
WSYX-TV Channel 6, phonetically SIX
WOSU, PBS from Ohio State University
WNCI-FM, Nationwide Communications International
WSNY-FM, "Sunny" 95 (but not sure if the call letters came first or vice-versa)

Additionally, there are a number of smaller-town Public radio stations, such as
WYSO, Yellow Springs Ohio
WMUB, Miami University Broadcasting

New York City (these radio stations may not still be around)
WAPP, Big APPle nickname
WNEW, NEW York
WNSR, New York Soft Rock

[empirestate]

Sounds like WRCH-FM 100.5 of New Britain/Hartford, CT. The station was known as Rich FM-100 in their days of beautiful music.

That makes no sense. If you set the station to 100, you would get a weak signal for 99.9 or 100.1, if either one existed. Definitely not 100.5.

Spoken like someone who has never tuned a radio with an analog dial. 

[hotdogPi]

Sounds like WRCH-FM 100.5 of New Britain/Hartford, CT. The station was known as Rich FM-100 in their days of beautiful music.

That makes no sense. If you set the station to 100, you would get a weak signal for 99.9 or 100.1, if either one existed. Definitely not 100.5.

Spoken like someone who has never tuned a radio with an analog dial. 

(Numbers correspond to FM only.)

I have a radio with an analog dial, but I don't know the exact station it's set to if it's not on, because the printed numbers don't match up with the actual numbers for some reason (they're about 1.5 off), and the slider that indicates which station it is about 3 inches long, which means that I can't tell what the tenths place of what I set it to is (each tenth is 0.4 mm).

Are you saying that a difference of 0.1 is too much to get a weak signal of an adjacent station?

[KEVIN_224]

What I think he was getting at:

The station was known as "Rich FM-100" back then. Their frequency, then and now, is 100.5 FM. An analog display may not have shown it correctly. Any digital tuner would indeed show "100.5 MHZ".

Connecticut is also home to "WEBE 108". That's WEBE-FM 107.9 of Westport, which is in the Bridgeport radio market.

The Boston radio market has WXKS-FM 107.9 of Medford, a.k.a. Top 40/CHR "Kiss 108".

[jasonh300]

Sounds like WRCH-FM 100.5 of New Britain/Hartford, CT. The station was known as Rich FM-100 in their days of beautiful music.

That makes no sense. If you set the station to 100, you would get a weak signal for 99.9 or 100.1, if either one existed. Definitely not 100.5.

Spoken like someone who has never tuned a radio with an analog dial. 

(Numbers correspond to FM only.)

I have a radio with an analog dial, but I don't know the exact station it's set to if it's not on, because the printed numbers don't match up with the actual numbers for some reason (they're about 1.5 off), and the slider that indicates which station it is about 3 inches long, which means that I can't tell what the tenths place of what I set it to is (each tenth is 0.4 mm).

Are you saying that a difference of 0.1 is too much to get a weak signal of an adjacent station?

Prior to around 1990, when digital tuners became the standard, radio stations never gave their frequency as ##.# (digital tuners existed in cars as far back as the early 80s to my knowledge...we had one in a 1985 Lebaron, but they still weren't common).  For advertisign purposes, and even top-of-the-hour station identification, they just rounded it off to whatever was closest.  On the analog radio, you just tuned it to around that number and then felt it out until you had a clear signal.  Then, if you were in the car, you could engage the mechanical preset so you could get back to it easily.

In New Orleans, we had B-97, which later became known as B-97.1.  Bayou 96, the easy listening station was actually 95.7.  WRNO, the Rock of New Orleans was known as FM-99 back in the 70s, and then someone decided that FM-100 sounded better, so they started calling it that, and even issued little yellow and blue "100" stickers to cover up the 99 on their bumper stickers that were so prevalent in that era.  Their actual frequency, then and now (although it's a talk station now) is 99.5.  Joy 102, later Magic 102 was 101.9.  Lite 105 was 105.3.

Similarly, some AM stations didn't bother with exact frequency in their advertising.  WQUE - Q-93 FM (93.3) had a simulcast on AM for a while that they called 13Q.  It was actually 1280 AM.

Back then, at least in our market, there were no station frequencies on FM that were close enough together that they would try to advertise the same number.  BUT, under certain conditions, you could pick up two B-97s...one was local on 97.1 and the other was in Mobile, Alabama on (I believe) 97.5.  And we had Joy 102 on 101.9 and Baton Rouge had WFMF-FM102 on 102.5, so if you were on the western edge of the New Orleans suburbs, you could get both sometimes.  They weren't close enough in frequency to interfere with each other.

[jwolfer]

Sounds like WRCH-FM 100.5 of New Britain/Hartford, CT. The station was known as Rich FM-100 in their days of beautiful music.

That makes no sense. If you set the station to 100, you would get a weak signal for 99.9 or 100.1, if either one existed. Definitely not 100.5.

Back in the day of dials it was pretty common for stations to approximate in their name... Here in north FL in the 1980s Jacksonville had "Rock 105" at 104.5 and Gainesville had "Rock 104" at 103.7... FWIW that used to really bother me when I was my 11 year old road geek self

Z981

[jwolfer]

WHO and WOC in Des Moines and Davenport IA respectively were assigned randomly but and early owner was BJ Palmer the Developer of Chiropractic gave meaning to the call letters..

Wonders Of Chiropractic 
With Hands Only


Z981

[CapeCodder]

Sounds like WRCH-FM 100.5 of New Britain/Hartford, CT. The station was known as Rich FM-100 in their days of beautiful music.

That makes no sense. If you set the station to 100, you would get a weak signal for 99.9 or 100.1, if either one existed. Definitely not 100.5.

Spoken like someone who has never tuned a radio with an analog dial. 

(Numbers correspond to FM only.)

I have a radio with an analog dial, but I don't know the exact station it's set to if it's not on, because the printed numbers don't match up with the actual numbers for some reason (they're about 1.5 off), and the slider that indicates which station it is about 3 inches long, which means that I can't tell what the tenths place of what I set it to is (each tenth is 0.4 mm).

Are you saying that a difference of 0.1 is too much to get a weak signal of an adjacent station?

Prior to around 1990, when digital tuners became the standard, radio stations never gave their frequency as ##.# (digital tuners existed in cars as far back as the early 80s to my knowledge...we had one in a 1985 Lebaron, but they still weren't common).  For advertisign purposes, and even top-of-the-hour station identification, they just rounded it off to whatever was closest.  On the analog radio, you just tuned it to around that number and then felt it out until you had a clear signal.  Then, if you were in the car, you could engage the mechanical preset so you could get back to it easily.

In New Orleans, we had B-97, which later became known as B-97.1.  Bayou 96, the easy listening station was actually 95.7.  WRNO, the Rock of New Orleans was known as FM-99 back in the 70s, and then someone decided that FM-100 sounded better, so they started calling it that, and even issued little yellow and blue "100" stickers to cover up the 99 on their bumper stickers that were so prevalent in that era.  Their actual frequency, then and now (although it's a talk station now) is 99.5.  Joy 102, later Magic 102 was 101.9.  Lite 105 was 105.3.

Similarly, some AM stations didn't bother with exact frequency in their advertising.  WQUE - Q-93 FM (93.3) had a simulcast on AM for a while that they called 13Q.  It was actually 1280 AM.

Back then, at least in our market, there were no station frequencies on FM that were close enough together that they would try to advertise the same number.  BUT, under certain conditions, you could pick up two B-97s...one was local on 97.1 and the other was in Mobile, Alabama on (I believe) 97.5.  And we had Joy 102 on 101.9 and Baton Rouge had WFMF-FM102 on 102.5, so if you were on the western edge of the New Orleans suburbs, you could get both sometimes.  They weren't close enough in frequency to interfere with each other.

WCIB 101.9-Cool 102
WPXC 102.9-Pixy 103
KWWR 95.7-Country '96
KSHE 94.7- K-SHE 95

[KEVIN_224]

WKSS-FM 95.7 of Hartford/Meriden, CT once went by "FM 96". This was with their prior format before going CHR/Top 40 in 1984. I always thought it was silly going by that, considering we have WTIC-FM 96.5 of Hartford. They were already a CHR/Top 40 station since 1977 (moving to a Hot AC format in 1994). The station nickname was 96 TIC-FM. A TV ad for WKSS-FM after the change even had a "caller" ask the DJ "Is this 96?", meaning TIC-FM? Cathy Fox, the jock in the ad, proudly beams and says "No! This is 95.7-KISS FM!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zSxOXjGBLA

[MisterSG1]

When Newfoundland was its own country, radio stations were assigned with the prefix VO

VOCM, which still exists to this day and is baded in St John's supposedly stands for Voice of the Common Man.

[US 89]

Sounds like WRCH-FM 100.5 of New Britain/Hartford, CT. The station was known as Rich FM-100 in their days of beautiful music.

That makes no sense. If you set the station to 100, you would get a weak signal for 99.9 or 100.1, if either one existed. Definitely not 100.5.

Back in the day of dials it was pretty common for stations to approximate in their name... Here in north FL in the 1980s Jacksonville had "Rock 105" at 104.5 and Gainesville had "Rock 104" at 103.7...

Still happens today. KSFI on 100.3FM in Salt Lake City is still commonly referred to as “FM 100” and their website is fm100.com, although it appears they’ve changed their name to “FM 100.3”.

[Bruce]

A few of the Seattle stations that I can find the origins of (some overlap with TV stations):

KING-FM: Formerly owned by KING-TV (named for King County, in which Seattle resides)

KIRO-FM: Owned by KIRO-TV, but derived from an earlier radio station (KIRO-AM) whose call letters were chosen to be pronounceable (having lost the race to grab "KING")

KNKX: Stands for "Connects"; formerly KPLU (Pacific Lutheran University) until it was nearly taken over by another NPR affiliate (KUOW; University of Washington)

KEXP: "Experience"

KTTH: "The TrutH" (ironic, given that this conservative talk radio regularly spews lies about local and national news)

KVI: Vashon Island, where the transmitter is located.

[SP Cook]

KTTH: "The TrutH" (ironic, given that this conservative talk radio regularly spews lies about local and national news)

You mean, of course, expresses opinions different from your own.

[hotdogPi]

KTTH: "The TrutH" (ironic, given that this conservative talk radio regularly spews lies about local and national news)

You mean, of course, expresses opinions different from your own.

Just because it's conservative talk radio doesn't mean it's true OR mean that it's false. If you haven't listened to the station itself, you don't know which it is. Take for example, Fox News, which is extremely biased but still not fake, and something like Infowars that is fake. Both are far right-wing.

[Bruce]

KTTH: "The TrutH" (ironic, given that this conservative talk radio regularly spews lies about local and national news)

You mean, of course, expresses opinions different from your own.

I can respect conservative opinions, but the hosts on this radio station regularly skew stories to fit their narrative. It's the exact opposite of good journalism.

One of the hosts, for example, rags on anything transit-related without even trying to dress up his points as factual: trains are 600 percent slower than a plane! voter-approved car tab fees are illegal (and I break the law to avoid them)! blaming the recent Amtrak derailment here on money instead of human error, as the NTSB found...etc.

[SectorZ]

KTTH: "The TrutH" (ironic, given that this conservative talk radio regularly spews lies about local and national news)

You mean, of course, expresses opinions different from your own.

I can respect conservative opinions, but the hosts on this radio station regularly skew stories to fit their narrative. It's the exact opposite of good journalism.

One of the hosts, for example, rags on anything transit-related without even trying to dress up his points as factual: trains are 600 percent slower than a plane! voter-approved car tab fees are illegal (and I break the law to avoid them)! blaming the recent Amtrak derailment here on money instead of human error, as the NTSB found...etc.

Where are any of those factually wrong? A plane is 6 times faster than a train, and pointing out a train ride costing more than said plane ride is exposing some pretty strange pricing. The train derailment story doesn't blame money. In fact, YOU placed incorrect verbiage in the hyperlink to make your point by saying they blamed money instead of human error when the first sentence of the story states "The DuPont Amtrak crash that killed three people was, in part, a now deadly race for federal tax dollars." In part does not equal instead.

[CapeCodder]

A few of the Seattle stations that I can find the origins of (some overlap with TV stations):

KING-FM: Formerly owned by KING-TV (named for King County, in which Seattle resides)

KIRO-FM: Owned by KIRO-TV, but derived from an earlier radio station (KIRO-AM) whose call letters were chosen to be pronounceable (having lost the race to grab "KING")

KNKX: Stands for "Connects"; formerly KPLU (Pacific Lutheran University) until it was nearly taken over by another NPR affiliate (KUOW; University of Washington)

KEXP: "Experience"

KTTH: "The TrutH" (ironic, given that this conservative talk radio regularly spews lies about local and national news)

KVI: Vashon Island, where the transmitter is located.

Does KIXI 880 still exist?

[golden eagle]

Per radio-locator.com, KIXI is still on the air.

[jp the roadgeek]

Sounds like WRCH-FM 100.5 of New Britain/Hartford, CT. The station was known as Rich FM-100 in their days of beautiful music.

That makes no sense. If you set the station to 100, you would get a weak signal for 99.9 or 100.1, if either one existed. Definitely not 100.5.

Back in the day of dials it was pretty common for stations to approximate in their name... Here in north FL in the 1980s Jacksonville had "Rock 105" at 104.5 and Gainesville had "Rock 104" at 103.7...

Still happens today. KSFI on 100.3FM in Salt Lake City is still commonly referred to as "FM 100"  and their website is fm100.com, although it appears they've changed their name to "FM 100.3" .

There is a 99.9 not too far away in Bridgeport, and most people in southern Hartford and northern New Haven county can get both, and there is no overlap.  In addition to WEBE 108, WRKI-FM at 95.1 in Danbury still bills itself as "i95", because "i95.1" would sound dumb.  And there's also WAQY "Rock 102" in Springfield, MA at 102.1

[golden eagle]

Atlanta has Q100, which is at 99.7. But they also called themselves Q100 when they were on 100.5.

Mississippi has a number of radio stations that don't use their frequencies in their names. In Jackson, there's US96, 99 Jams, Y101 (though their logo is 101.7), MISS 103 and Kixie 107. In Hattiesburg/Laurel, SL100 and B95 (at 95.9). Meridian has Q101 and 97OKK. On the Gulf Coast, there's Kicker 108 and K99.

[thenetwork]

Back in the day (pre-90s), actual call letters were remembered by most people when tuning around or naming off their favorite station(s).  Nowadays, everything is Jack-this, Mix-that, Hot-whatever, ESPN Radio, The River, etc..., and the frequency, which seems to be all that matters. I couldn't even tell you whose call letters are in my town anymore, save for maybe 2 or 3 stations out of 20-25 total.

Same thing with the air talent or DJs on most stations (what few there are anymore).  Back in the day I used to know even many of the the jocks who were on stations I didn't even listen to since they all made dozens of area appearances, or had individual billboards, ads or commercials somewhere in the non-radio media.

It's gonna be nice to finally see iHeart media, nee Clear Channel,  go down in flames later this week when they officially announce they are bankrupt.  They were the leaders in bastardizing the radio medium over the last 20 years.  The only people who escape are the executives with the golden parachutes who got their bonuses last week.  Hope the 'chutes don't open right for any of them.

[US71]

It's gonna be nice to finally see iHeart media, nee Clear Channel,  go down in flames later this week when they officially announce they are bankrupt.  They were the leaders in bastardizing the radio medium over the last 20 years.  The only people who escape are the executives with the golden parachutes who got their bonuses last week.  Hope the 'chutes don't open right for any of them.

They just switched formats in Little Rock. 94.9 KHKN  just switched from Classic Rock to Billboard 100 after 2 years. Before that, they were TOM FM for 4 years. A friend claims this is just an elaborate April Fool's prank, but most people disagree.

IHeart also owns the country station KSSN , often referred to as "kissin in my car"

[inkyatari]

WMTU - FM 91.9 in Houghton, MI for Michigan Technological University - the student-run station yours truly was a DJ on. 

WONU - FM89.7 - Olivet Nazarene University - where I went to school for broadcasting.  I was only on the over the air station once on a thanksgiving.  I had many shifts on the "most dorms don't get it because we're too cheap to fix the signal" intra campus station U-54