Callsign records (was: Re: worthy competition - was Boom Boom)

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Fri, 29 Oct 2010 10:52:23 -0400, Scott Fybush <scott@fybush.com> said:

> I believe the current record holder is an LPFM station near Lebanon, PA. 
> It's licensed to Gap, PA on 92.9, and I think the current calls are 
> WLRI-LP, but for a few years it was filing for new calls on almost a 
> monthly basis. It's not clear to me how many of those calls actually 
> made it on the air, since the station was apparently silent for a while.

> The FCC's current list includes 20 callsigns for the station just since 
> 2003.

If only the data in CDBS went back before 1978!

It's a simple database query to pull out the current winners:

bra=> select fac_callsign, num_calls from facility natural join (select facility_id, max(callsign_seq_id) as num_calls from call_sign_history group by facility_id)  calls order by num_calls desc;
 fac_callsign | num_calls 
--------------+-----------
 WLRI-LP      |        20
 W23CN-D      |        14
 KSFN         |        12
 WAMS         |        12
 WREW         |        11
 W17CD        |        11
 KFUL-LP      |        11
 K48GO        |        11
 KQNM         |        11
 WHTK-FM      |        11
 WSMM         |        11
 WZBK-FM      |        11
 KUSS         |        11
 KBAY         |        11
 DKIIS        |        11

It turns out that there are some discrepancies in CDBA (imagine that),
so the number of callsign records doesn't match up with the sequence
in the database for about 350 stations, including WSMM (9 or 11) and
KUSS (also 9 or 11).  For WSMM, CDBS records: WSPW, WERQ, missing,
missing, WGTC, WZUW, WWLV, WOZW, WZOW, WOZW, WSMM.  (This station is
in the South Bend market; when we were there in 2001 it was WGTC.)

If you instead look at the number of distinct callsigns, the list is
slightly different:

bra=> select fac_callsign, num_distinct_calls from facility natural join (select facility_id, count(distinct callsign) as num_distinct_calls from call_sign_history group by facility_id)  calls order by num_distinct_calls desc;
 fac_callsign | num_distinct_calls 
--------------+--------------------
 WLRI-LP      |                 13
 WZBK-FM      |                 11
 WHTK-FM      |                 11
 KPDA-FM      |                 10
 KQNM         |                 10
 WYAI         |                 10
 WAIV         |                 10
 KJFA         |                 10
 DKIIS        |                 10
 WCSY-FM      |                 10

"DKIIS", by the way, is the dead 850 in Thousand Jokes, California,
whuch was owned by our friends at 50 East Rivercenter Blvd. in
Covington when the license was turned in.

-GAWollman