WWDJ 1150

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Sun, 27 Jul 2008 11:51:52 -0400, "Dan.Strassberg" <dan.strassberg@att.net> said:

> I suspect that the answer is yes--some station proably has had more
> than 12 call signs--but I don't know how you could prove it as a
> practical matter. The FCC does maintain some records on previous call
> signs, but AFAIK, the records are both incomplete and not organized in
> a way that would facilitate a search by number of call-sign changes.

Sure they are.  It's a simple database query, of the sort they teach
in SQL 101:

bra=> select fac_callsign, "count" from (select facility_id, count(*) as "count" from call_sign_history group by facility_id having count(*) >= 11) summary natural join facility order by "count" desc;
 fac_callsign | count 
--------------+-------
 WLRI-LP      |    18
 W23CN        |    13
 KFUL-LP      |    11
 KPIG         |    11
 K48GO        |    11
 DKIIS        |    11
 KBAY         |    11
 W17CD        |    11
(8 rows)

However, this does not include any callsign changes made before the
FCC computerized the callsign desk thirty years ago.  But winner,
over the last three decades at least, has the following history:

     begin_date      | callsign 
---------------------+----------
 2003-10-27 00:00:00 | WOMB-LP
 2004-04-23 00:00:00 | WGCP-LP
 2004-05-12 00:00:00 | WOMB-LP
 2004-10-16 00:00:00 | WLDW-LP
 2004-12-20 00:00:00 | WOBS-LP
 2005-04-20 00:00:00 | WGPQ-LP
 2005-05-09 00:00:00 | WLBX-LP
 2005-05-16 00:00:00 | WOBS-LP
 2005-09-15 00:00:00 | WLRI-LP
 2006-05-01 00:00:00 | WLIZ-LP
 2006-06-13 00:00:00 | WTPP-LP
 2006-07-01 00:00:00 | WOMB-LP
 2006-08-17 00:00:00 | WPAG-LP
 2007-03-12 00:00:00 | WLIZ-LP
 2007-04-23 00:00:00 | WLAL-LP
 2007-09-01 00:00:00 | WLRI-LP
 2008-01-04 00:00:00 | WOPR-LP
 2008-01-17 00:00:00 | WLRI-LP
(18 rows)

That's a very indecisive licensee.  But the Commission presumably
doesn't care, so long as they get their $65.

Some of the others are clearly errors on the part of the Commission:

     begin_date      | callsign 
---------------------+----------
                     | 880624YQ
 1997-03-04 00:00:00 | W06BP
 1997-03-04 00:00:00 | W17CD
 1998-06-02 00:00:00 | W06BP
 1998-09-08 00:00:00 | W17CD
 1998-10-22 00:00:00 | W06BP
 1998-08-31 00:00:00 | W17CD
 1999-07-15 00:00:00 | W06BP
 1999-07-15 00:00:00 | W17CD
 1999-07-15 00:00:00 | W06BP
 1999-07-15 00:00:00 | W17CD
(11 rows)

The "DKIIS" listed is the former 850 in Thousand Oaks, whose history
looks like this:

     begin_date      | callsign 
---------------------+----------
                     | KGOE
 1984-04-29 00:00:00 | KMDY
 1992-04-07 00:00:00 | KCTQ
 1995-05-01 00:00:00 | KAHS
 1998-07-27 00:00:00 | KLYF
 1999-08-27 00:00:00 | KBET
 2000-08-30 00:00:00 | KACD
 2001-02-22 00:00:00 | KSSC
 2001-03-08 00:00:00 | KACD
 2003-10-26 00:00:00 | KIIS
 2005-03-04 00:00:00 | DKIIS
(11 rows)

-GAWollman