RE: WGOD, etc.

[Garrett Wollman <wollman>]

<<On Sun, 25 Jul 1999 22:43:29 -0400, "Mark Laurence" <laurence@sprintmail.com> said:

> I don't believe Canadian stations have call letters starting with 
> "CR."  The only combinations I've seen are "CB," "CF," "CH," "CI," 
> "CJ," "CK," and a couple of "V'"s in Newfoundland.

They have a bunch of V's which are used for non-broadcast and LPFM
services, plus the VO's which were inherited from Newfoundland when it
joined the Canadian confederation.  They also have CG's which are also
not used for broadcast.  (LPTVs get either real callsigns or
CH1234-style.)  Canadian hams tend to have VE callsigns; I don't know
about airplane tail numbers and airports.

Under international treaty, there is no requirement for domestic
broadcasters to be issued international callsigns -- countries are
free to issue callsigns for domestic stations using any scheme they
wish, or not at all.  Canada's regulatory body, the CRTC, has decided
to use international callsigns for all non-Federal-government-owned
stations, but this was purely their choice, and the use of callsigns
with a `CB' prefix for many CBC stations is contrived for convenience.
(I don't have a good historical reference, but I'm willing to bet that
this usage dates from the time the CBC was also Canada's broadcasting
regulator.)  Many other countries don't assign callsigns to
broadcasters at all, any some that do, like Australia and New Zealand,
don't issue international ones to domestic stations.

- -GAWollman

- --
Garrett A. Wollman   | O Siem / We are all family / O Siem / We're all the same
wollman@lcs.mit.edu  | O Siem / The fires of freedom 
Opinions not those of| Dance in the burning flame
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