Why do radio stations and tv stations begin with K?

Question

Why do radio stations and tv stations begin with K?

Answer 1

If the station is West of the Mississippi River they use K and if they are east of the river they use W.  They use X in Mexico and C in Canada.

Answer 2

The geographic location of the station determines the call letters assigned to radio stations. If you are west they usually begin with K. A great station in LA is kearth 101.1 Or in St. Louis KLOU the station where you program the music. Mostly the music from 60s to early 90 though. Keep smilin!

Answer 3

KJOY 98.3

dont know about tv

Answer 4

they all don't have k in them

Answer 5

Originally it was stations west of the Mississippi that started with a K and those east started with a W.

I'm not sure if that still hold true today or not.   Originally it was done to help insure no duplicate on call letters nor confusion because they used to allow for MASSIVE transmission power to where you could pick up live broadcast from Nashville in Houston Texas.

Hope this answers the question.

Answer 6

I don't know why, but the west half of the US's radio stations start  with K and the east side starts with W.

Answer 7

Well, this depends on which side of the Mississippi Rivwer you are on. Radio and TV stations to the west are preceded by a K; those east are preceded by a W.

To make a long story short, call signs were implemented and regulated (after some period of confusion where separate calling stations chose their own call sign, which frequently was already used by another calling station) in the early days of radio, when it was primarily used as a "wireless telegraph", and messages were transmitted in Morse Code. With the advent of TV, this practice was simply extended to the new medium.

Pretty good source for the info below.

Answer 8

All station east of the Mississippi with the exception of KDKA Pittsburgh start with a W and those west start with a K.  As to why I'm not sure .

Answer 9

There used to be a radio station in Los Angeles called K-Lite (it was a soft rock station), but it's actual call letters were KLIT.  Pretty funny.

The link below shows some other funny call letters (like ****).

Answer 10

some people say that the K sound is a strong sound like Coke, Spanx.....etc., so they think you'll remember it easier...thats what i heard..

Answer 11

The ones that start with K are west of the Mississippi River. To the east, they start with W.

The Federal Communications Commission issues call letters, and they make an effort to accomodate specific letter requests.

Answer 12

K and W, actually.  Stations west of the Mississippi River have a K before their call letters and stations east of the Miss have a W.

Originally, radio stations were assigned an intital letter for the country they broadcast. Canadia is "C". Mexico is "X". The letters were aribitrary. "W" was used first. As the US expanded "K" was added.

Answer 13

Because each country is assigned at least one letter for radio station call letters to begin with.  The US is big enough to have 2 letters.  Any station East of the Mississippi starts with W.  Stations west of the Mississippi start with K.

If you hear stations that start with other letters, they are from another country.  Those who live close to Canada may be able to tell you what letter stations from there start with.

Answer 14

East of the Mississippi the "call letters" start with W...old choice made when the industry was just begining...carried over into TV station call letters, too...just a way of identifying one station frmo another...but why K or W...I doubt anyone still knows...

Answer 15

The letters indicate which part of the country the station is located. So W's indicate the Eastern/Midwest part of the country and K's indicate the Western part of the country

Answer 16

They don't all begin with K it depend upon the region in which you live.  In Indiana and Ohio they begin with WWKI (Kokomo, IN) and WKRP (Cincinnati, OH)

Answer 17

As others have stated and I'll elaborate on the callsign thing...

The FCC decided in the 1930s to use K west of the Mississippi River and W for callsigns east of the Mississippi to avoid duplication and make it easier to identity possibly where a station is coming from.

However, some stations were granted callsigns before this rule, Since these stations that were grandfathered in never changed calls, we have stations such as KDKA in Philly and WFAA in Dallas who break the rules.

Another thing is that some stations have 3 letters instead of 4 like WBZ in Boston, WWL In New Orleans, and WSM in Nashville.

These stations were granted callsigns before the FCC decided that 4 letters would be needed to give all stations a way to ID. Since these stations never changed calls in 75 years, we have these 3 letter calls still out in some areas.

Technically the US is allowed Any combinations starting with K,N,W and from AA-AL ..However the A calls are not normally used and only heard with amateur radio operators and the N calls are mainly used by the US government as well as Ham radio and I believe some maritime ships.

However some posters were wrong....

Canada is only allowed to use the following two letters in the beginning of any callsign: CF-CK, CY-CZ, VA-VG, VE, VO, VX-VY, and XJ-XO.

Answer 18

"In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a callsign or call letters, or abbreviated as a call) is a unique designation for a transmitting station."

"Each country has a set of alphabetic or numeric International Telecommunication Union-designated prefixes with which their call signs must begin."

:edit:

The bottom half of the first section of this wiki article (International series) explains where the K and W came from.