While wandering through the Upper Midwest.

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:16:52 -0500, A Joseph Ross <joe@attorneyross.com> said:

> On 2/20/2012 2:57 AM, Garrett Wollman wrote:
>> <<On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 01:17:44 -0500, Kevin Vahey<kvahey@gmail.com>  said:
>> 
>>> I am also curious why several stations in North Dakota have W instead of K.
>> Because the line used to be the western border of ND, SD, NE, KS, OK,
>> and TX.  Hence WOAI, WIBW, WJAG, WNAX, and WDAY, among many others.

> There are a number of callsigns in the United States that don't follow 
> the Mississippi River pattern, for various reasons.  For example, KDKA 
> in Pittsburg, which so far as I can tell, doesn't follow any of the 
> rules.  There are also a number of W calls in Texas.

As I said, the boundary used to follow the western border of Texas.
That explains all the W calls in Texas, not to mention the other
states I mentioned above.  The original boundary made geographic sense
because ships in the Atlantic used K callsigns, and ships in the
Pacific used W callsigns -- the Bureau of Navigation's scheme was that
shore stations serving the Atlantic (which could be as far west as
Texas) would get W callsigns, and shore stations serving the Pacific
would get K callsigns, the opposite of the assignment for ships.

The FCC doesn't really try to police the boundary in Minnesota or
Louisiana, and through various dodges it is possible to move callsigns
across the river within the same market (such as WWWK -> KWK-FM -> KWK
in Granite City, Ill.).

Pittsburghers will not forgive you for leaving the "h" out of their
name; Pittsburg is in Kansas (and several other states).  KDKA seems
to be an anomaly -- either the Department of Commerce had briefly
forgotten about the W/K rule, or the clerk who assigned it was just
sloppy.  KQV and KYW were also odd cases (with KYW even odder having
been a "portable" station and then later a fixed station licensed to
Chicago).  If I remember correctly, KFIZ is acknowledged as a true
mistake -- although the Mississippi does run through Wisconsin, it's
nowhere near Fond du Lac, and there are no populated places (or even
inhabitants) of the parts of Wisconsin that are currently west of the
Mississippi.

-GAWollman