WJPZ-FM Syracuse (was: Made-up callsigns (was: WBZ-TV News on WSBK...))

["Ben Levy" <belevy@syr.edu>]

> Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2002 11:27:57 -0500 (EST)
> From: hmglaz@webtv.net (Howard Glazer)
> Subject: Made-up callsigns (was: WBZ-TV News on WSBK...)
>
> I was attending Syracuse University when WJPZ was founded -- a
> tight-format student Top 40 station for pragmatic radio majors who
> realized that stations in the real world don't let you bring in your own
> records and ramble on about the artists. The station started as a
> carrier current operation at 1200 KHz. The callsign was thought up by
> the station manager and used with no authority at all. The station later
> went Part 15, on the same frequency. Several years later, it became a
> fully licensed FM station, at 89.1 (IIRC) and got the same call it had
> been using since its carrier-current inception. I wonder if any other
> stations can make the same claim.

There's a bit of a disconnect I see here as I look out my dorm room window
that has a great view of the WJPZ-FM and WAER towers. It's something only
this list would ever care about...

It's not WJPZ Syracuse, it's WJPZ-FM Syracuse. The present top of the hour
ID recordings call it "WJPZ-FM Syracuse" but past recorded IDs said "WJPZ
Syracuse". Looking them up shows a callsign of WJPZ-FM, and I can't seem to
find a record of it being changed anytime in recent memory.

As far as I know, the FCC just doesn't assign W???-FM or W???-TV unless the
plain W??? string has already been checked out on another band. If that's
true, then there's no way the station could be WJPZ-FM unless something
somewhere was WJPZ at the time. (Like, maybe, the AM 1200 operation...?)

Although, I get the distinct feeling most of this happened before I was
born...

Ben