Re: [IRCA] Call letter change

[Scott Fybush <scott@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Pete Taylor wrote:
> Scott,
>
> I question your statement. I do not think the buyers of KMO and KOL 
> voluntarily relinquished those calls in favor of KKMO and KKOL. Also, 
> you may remember that it took some sort of special plea for the owners 
> of KKHJ to get the calls KHJ back. Would you compare these instances 
> with your statement about WIL possibilities? Thanks.

Sure - when KMO and KOL changed calls on AM, there were no KMO-FM or 
KOL-FM to keep the three-letter base call alive. When KHJ changed calls 
to KRTH on AM in the eighties, the KHJ call remained alive on KHJ-TV for 
a few more years, but then KHJ-TV changed to KCAL-TV, leaving no active 
"KHJ" anywhere in Los Angeles and thus requiring special permission to 
bring back the three-letter call on AM.

By contrast, when WIL(AM) became WRTH(AM) the first time around, the WIL 
calls remained active on WIL-FM.

The FCC has no problem allowing the owner of a station with a 
three-letter base call to use that same three-letter base call on other 
services, as long as it's under the same ownership and in the same 
market. That's why Bonneville was able to change WRTH(AM) back to 
WIL(AM) a couple of years ago without any hassle. It's also why there 
has been no issue with the assignments of WWL-FM, KSL-FM, WBT-FM, 
WWJ-TV, WLS-FM or WGL-FM in the last few years. In each case, the 
relevant three-letter base call has remained active on another service.

It used to be that the FCC forced stations to change calls when they 
were being sold, if the result would be two owners in the same market 
sharing a callsign. There are plenty of examples from the period in the 
early seventies when the Commission was splitting up TV/radio combos - 
WBEN stayed with radio in Buffalo, WBEN-TV became WIVB, for instance.

Today, the Commission leaves it up to the seller to decide whether or 
not the calls will go with the license when a station is sold. Sometimes 
a buyer is allowed to keep the calls - WWL radio in New Orleans is owned 
by Entercom, WWL-TV by Belo, for example. More recently, Citadel was 
allowed to keep the heritage ABC calls (KABC, KGO, WLS, WABC) on the 
stations it bought from Disney, which still owns KABC-TV, KGO-TV, WLS-TV 
and WABC-TV.

In other cases, the seller doesn't want any confusion between owners and 
so they mandate a call change. That's what happened with WIL(AM). But 
because there's still a WIL-FM that's active on the FCC's books, 
Bonneville (or anyone who buys WIL-FM from them in the future) could 
repurchase 1430 (or any other AM in the market, actually) and change the 
calls to WIL without any FCC hassle.

(The FCC allows certain other grandfathered callsigns to be transferred 
among services, too - when Clear Channel owned both WOAI(AM) and KMOL-TV 
in San Antonio, it was allowed to change KMOL-TV back to WOAI-TV without 
a problem, for instance.)

Make sense?

s





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