Re: [IRCA] RIP KFRC

[Scott Fybush <scott@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 03:13 PM 10/21/2005 -0500, you wrote:

>Aren't they still allowed if it's a station that once had them, changed
>calls and now wants the old three-letter calls back?

There's some precedent for that. KKHJ in Los Angeles was allowed to return 
to KHJ a few years back after giving the FCC a line about how the calls, in 
Spanish, were pronounced "ca-ca," which offended the audience. (Note that 
KKHJ's legal ID was done in English, not Spanish!)

My guess is that the Commission would be similarly accommodating if, say, 
KVTO in Berkeley wanted KRE back, or if KSLG in St. Louis wanted to return 
to KWK.

Call letters are really nothing more than an inconvenience to the 
Commission these days, since they no longer keep track of licenses that 
way. Since the creation of the CDBS database a decade or so ago, each 
station is assigned a unique facility ID number, and that's how the FCC 
tracks them now. So the station we're talking about in San Francisco is 
known to the Commission now as "1082."

As for the history behind the KFRC calls on 610 in San Francisco, I'm 
having a hard time getting weepy about this one (and I'm as geeky about 
radio history as anyone.) It's been 14 years since the AM had an 
independent existence in the market; since 1991, it's been just a forgotten 
simulcast of what's now KFRC-FM 99.7. Pretty much all of the station's 
identity has been tied up exclusively with the FM for many years now. The 
AM was an afterthought, used for sports (A's and, at least at one point, 
Sharks hockey) and little else.

The call change was inevitable when the sale to Family Stations came 
around. KEAR is *their* heritage call in the Bay Area, having been used on 
their FM facility for well over 40 years now. They wanted to hang on to 
that call on their new AM outlet. Infinity didn't want anyone else using 
the "KFRC" calls in the market, since that's still an important brand to 
them on the FM outlet.

s

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