While wandering through the Upper Midwest.

[Kevin Vahey]

This article I linked to mention's KOP.

http://earlyradiohistory.us/kwtrivia.htm

Is CBW in danger of being moved to AM?  I didn't realize until being sent
there just how isolated Winnipeg is. Edmonton and Calgary are both 850
miles away, Toronto 1300 and Minneapolis is closest at 450.

We did notice on 1290 that the TSN sportsflash person just 'You're
listening to TSN Radio on CHUM, CKGM and CFRW' which was the only mention
of call signs.




On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 1:44 AM, Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com> wrote:

> Garrett wrote--
>
>  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.
>>
>>
>
> And even as far back as 1922, the W and K rule was not followed exactly.
>  The first station in Alaska was WLAY (not KLAY).  Given that some of the
> early call letters came from ships at sea which had sunk (and the next ship
> didn't want those call letters, thinking them bad luck), the Department of
> Commerce did not always follow logic when handing out call letters to the
> new commercial radio stations.  And sometimes, there was a requested call
> with a K (such as the early Police radio station KOP) and the K got
> assigned even though the station was located in Detroit and probably should
> have gotten a W... somehow WOP would not have gotten the job done, I'd
> imagine.
>