Fake call letters and phoney *legal* ID's (was: Re: WPLM-FM Plymouth)
AIRWAVES MEDIA PUBLISHING
}Paul Anderson wrote...
}
} I understand the music programming comes from satellite. What I was lamenting
} was that a Plymouth station was pretending it was a Boston station. It's
} especially silly since their signal north and west of Boston is so poor. I
} can't imagine their signal in Boston itself is that great, either.
Here in Springfield Mo, rimshot CHR KHTO, mumbles its calls and city
then gives a "pseudo-legal ID" of ....
[insert jingle music here] The New Hot 106.7... KHOT SPRINGFIELD
Fake calls and over 25 miles from Springfield. Signal on the other
side of town (and even in town) is spotty to poor.
Why,,, oh why do stations invent call letters like that? Would they
get rating credit if someone wrote down KHOT? There is also no phone
listing for them, even though the are a duopoly with classic rocker
KZBE (B-95). Great CHR station, talented PD and great air talent,
but a stoooooopid positioning scheme.
William Pfeiffer
Moderator: rec.radio.broadcasting/AIRWAVES RADIO JOURNAL
w...@airwaves.com * airw...@woodtech.com * r...@clm.aiss.uiuc.edu
Web: http://radio.aiss.uiuc.edu/~rrb/
Lou Schneider
AIRWAVES MEDIA PUBLISHING (r...@clm.aiss.uiuc.edu) wrote:
: Here in Springfield Mo, rimshot CHR KHTO, mumbles its calls and city
: then gives a "pseudo-legal ID" of ....
: [insert jingle music here] The New Hot 106.7... KHOT SPRINGFIELD
: Fake calls and over 25 miles from Springfield. Signal on the other
: side of town (and even in town) is spotty to poor.
Here in Northern California, KRSH recently came on the air, licensed to
the Lake County town of Middletown. Middletown is literally in the
middle of nowhere, and because of the surrounding mountain ranges has
little or no local service.
The first thing management did was locate the transmitter on a moutaintop
that sort of served Middletown, and put a marginal signal into the much
larger Santa Rosa market. Then they built the station's studios in
downtown Santa Rosa.
The only time the city of license is mentioned on the air is during the
hourly weather forecast, buried inside the :55 spot cluster.
"... right now it's sunny and 80 degrees here at the Railroad Square
studios of KRSH. Middletown reports 76 degrees, and it's 85 in Rohnert
Park..."
Lou Schneider
KCBS/KRQR
Mike Ward
In article <3tfgnr$o...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> r...@clm.aiss.uiuc.edu (AIRWAVES MEDIA PUBLISHING) writes:
>Here in Springfield Mo, rimshot CHR KHTO, mumbles its calls and city
>then gives a "pseudo-legal ID" of ....
>[insert jingle music here] The New Hot 106.7... KHOT SPRINGFIELD
>Fake calls and over 25 miles from Springfield. Signal on the other
>side of town (and even in town) is spotty to poor.
We used to do similar at 95.9 WAX-FM, in the Youngstown market. The announcer
came on and mumbled "WAXF Sharpsville/Youngstown". Sharpsville, PA was the
actual city of license, on the Ohio/PA border. But we didn't give a
pseudo-legal like that one. Incidentally, I believe WHTO in the Williamsport,
PA market does the same thing - last I'd heard, they refer to themselves
exclusively as WHOT. (Those legal call letters belong to, to come full
circle, WHOT(FM) - Hot FM 101 in Youngstown, OH.)
>Why,,, oh why do stations invent call letters like that? Would they
>get rating credit if someone wrote down KHOT? There is also no phone
>listing for them, even though the are a duopoly with classic rocker
>KZBE (B-95). Great CHR station, talented PD and great air talent,
>but a stoooooopid positioning scheme.
They get credit, assuming they've registered "KHOT" with Arbitron. And like
some radio stations, they're probably listed in the phone book as "Hot 106.7".
Kinda makes you scratch your head, but there are a couple of local stations
that are listed only by their on-air identifiers...so if you go coming through
the phone book under "K", you won't find them. There should be at least a
cross reference there.
Mike
--
Mike Ward KFBK News Radio 1530 - Sacramento, California, USA
mw...@crl.com Segment contributor, "On Computers" (syndicated radio)
ae...@yfn.ysu.edu WWW homepage - http://www.crl.com/~mward/
Clarke PXY
> Here in Springfield Mo, rimshot CHR KHTO, mumbles its calls and city
> then gives a "pseudo-legal ID" of ....
> [insert jingle music here] The New Hot 106.7... KHOT SPRINGFIELD
> Fake calls and over 25 miles from Springfield. Signal on the other
> side of town (and even in town) is spotty to poor.
> Why,,, oh why do stations invent call letters like that? Would they
> get rating credit if someone wrote down KHOT? There is also no phone
> listing for them, even though the are a duopoly with classic rocker
> KZBE (B-95). Great CHR station, talented PD and great air talent,
> but a stoooooopid positioning scheme.
Well, everyone wants to identify with the big (or biggest) city. When I
consulted Q-94 (WBXQ) in the lovely little town of Cresson PA, we focused
on Johnstown and Altoona. The local Alternative station, WNVE 95.1,
licensed to South Bristol NY, makes a big deal out of trying to be a
Rochester radio station. It's the same all over the country.
Yes, KHTO would get Arbitron credit for KHOT, either as a "call letter
flip", or if they listed it in their slogan file with Arbitron. Probably
they think people are more likely to remember KHOT than KHTO...and, sad to
say, they're probably right.
Clarke
=============================================================
Clarke Ingram, PD, WPXY-FM, Rochester NY (Clar...@aol.com)
=============================================================
Jay Rose
This is somewhat related to the thread... Program Directors aren't the
_only_ ones to get around legal-ID regs:
Political advertising genius Tony Schwartz invented a response to the
post-Watergate requirement that campaign spots include the wording "Paid
for by" and the legal name of the sponsor ("Committee to re=elect Joe
Blow", "Clone for Congress Committee", etc).
First, he'd have the candidate set up a legal entity called "People who
Want to See Porque Barrell Clean Up our Government, Inc". It made for a
long caption on the checking account, but is perfectly legal.
Then, he'd bury text like this in the spot:
"...those documents prove we can't afford a scumbag like Joe Blow in
office any more. That's why this announcement was carefully researched,
checked, recorded, re-checked, and paid for by people who want to see Pork
Barrell... etc"
-----------------Jay Rose's Digital Playroom--------------------
Clio/Emmy Winning Sound Design for Broadcast, Multimedia
617/277-0041 fax/232-8869
http://www.tiac.net/users/jcrose/playroom.html
Rob Landry
clar...@aol.com (Clarke PXY) writes:
>Yes, KHTO would get Arbitron credit for KHOT, either as a "call letter
>flip", or if they listed it in their slogan file with Arbitron.
I imagine they've listed KHOT as an on-air slogan. Call letter flips may not
be the best thing to rely on. Heaven help the Boston station whose inattentive
listener with a diary mistakenly writes down "WMBX". Did he mean WBMX? Or
WMJX? Or maybe WMEX? Probably not WZLX, WFNX, or WKOX, but you never know.
Boston also has a WBOS, a WBCS, and a WBCN that can all be mutually confused,
and it has WCRB, WHRB and WNRB, not to mention WCLB which is now WKLB, and
WCVB(TV).
WBZ has the best calls in town-- nobody's likely to confuse them with anybody.
Rob Landry
um...@tiac.net
The Veto knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the old Republic--
before the dark time, before S.652...
Robert A. Sobczak
In article <3tl64f$q...@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>, clar...@aol.com (Clarke PXY) says:
>Well, everyone wants to identify with the big (or biggest) city. When I
>consulted Q-94 (WBXQ) in the lovely little town of Cresson PA, we focused
>on Johnstown and Altoona.
Clarke, I still have to play airchecks of the legal for people to believe
that it ran like that.
For those who never heard it, JAM did the jingle with a 7 second talkover
bed, then sang "Q-94 FM, WBXQ, (1 second pause), Altoona-Johnstown.
During the pause, someone (was it Clarke or Neil) wispered the city of
license "Cresson". I think I had worked 3 shows before I knew what city
and that was because I went over and read the license.
Radio is sooooo much fun.......
Rob
Robert Casey
I know of two odd station ID funnies. One is KKSN Portland, they called
themselves "KISN" (something that they once had this call, lost it, and
some other station elsewhere grabbed it). They said the real ID buried
in commercials at :55.
WHTZ Newark is another station that buries the legal ID, around :45
(I thought that stations had plus or minus 5 minutes from the top of
the hour to ID). Newark NJ is a rathole, so I can see them not
wanting to brag about it. They usually say something like Z100 New York
for positioners?.
Just thought of another, 91X near San Diego. It's really a Mexican station
XETRA, and around :45 they play a short ID in (I guess) Spanish, "blah
blah Exxa Etra Tray, Baha Mexico". I can see them not wanting to emphasize
that they broadcast from a country where you can't drink the water. :-)
Dave Sheranko
> pseudo-legal like that one. Incidentally, I believe WHTO in the Williamsport,
> PA market does the same thing - last I'd heard, they refer to themselves
> exclusively as WHOT. (Those legal call letters belong to, to come full
> circle, WHOT(FM) - Hot FM 101 in Youngstown, OH.)
Totally trivial here, but just FYI.. WHTO became "The New Hot-FM"
sometime around December '94 (I *think*), and although they don't plug
themselves as WHOT anymore, they weakly hide their call letters. :10 of
the hour, their announcer (same guy who does WHTZ in NYC - does ANYBODY
know his name or contact?!?) comes on and says something like "Technically,
we're known as WHTO, Muncy/Williamsport. But all our friends call us
103.9, Hot-FM."
I always wondered why they do that myself...I doubt any listener picks
their station of choice by call letters! :)
Dave Sheranko
dps...@planetx.bloomu.edu
WSQV / Susquehanna Broadcasting
Harold Hallikainen
The station I'm listening to right now just ran their ID. It
went something like this...
ATTENTION... ATTENTION... This is the LEGAL ID... ATTENTION...
ATTENTION... Whether you're in your car or at home, this is KOTR,
Cambria, San Luis Obispo... You can relax now.
Harold
--
Harold Hallikainen email hhal...@slonet.org
Hallikainen & Friends www http://slonet.org/~hhallika/
141 Suburban Road, Building E4 phone +1 805 541 0200
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401-7590 fax +1 805 541 0201