Unbuilt Maui TV station lands questionable call letters

[snopes]

The call letters KUNT have landed at a yet-unbuilt low-power digital television station in Wailuku, Maui.

Alarmingly similar to a word the dictionary says is obscene, the call letters were among a 15-page list of new call letters issued by the Federal Communications Commission.

http://starbulletin.com/2007/07/26/business/engle.html

[Saint James]

Until recently there was a LA radio station known as KLIT-FM. After they changed their format from lite rock to 'adult contemporary' and went by the moniker "Jill FM" they decided for some reason to change their call letters.

[callee]

Even better! From the OP:

The same station owner also received KWTF for a station in Arizona

[Skeptic]

Originally Posted by callee

Even better! From the OP:
The same station owner also received KWTF for a station in Arizona

Sorry, I'm totally lost here. What is the significance of these letters?

[Eddylizard]

Originally Posted by Skeptic

Sorry, I'm totally lost here. What is the significance of these letters?

Say it out loud, or try swapping the 'k' for a hard 'c'.

Or do you mean why does the radio station have a call sign.

[James G]

Originally Posted by Eddylizard

Say it out loud, or try swapping the 'k' for a hard 'c'.

Or do you mean why does the radio station have a call sign.

I think Skeptic was refering to KWTF. Which reads like 'kay, What The F**k. (WTF being common netspeak)

[Skeptic]

Originally Posted by James G

I think Skeptic was refering to KWTF. Which reads like 'kay, What The F**k. (WTF being common netspeak)

Oh, I got it now. Didn't know that the K was meant to stand for, but I could see the WTF alright. It seems they all start with K.

[Wolf333]

Originally Posted by Skeptic

Oh, I got it now. Didn't know that the K was meant to stand for, but I could see the WTF alright. It seems they all start with K.

West of the Mississippi river, the station letter begin with K. East og the Miss, they start with a W.

(there are some exceptions to this)

[Johnny Slick]

Nah, that's the FCC's rule. East of the Miss, begin with a W, west, K. Also, these call letters are not merely "assigned". You submit them to the FCC and it grants them to you. The station I used to work at, KIRO, was named after the first two letters of Christ's name in Greek, for example. I'm not sure how KUNT got under the radar. I am pretty sure they aren't going to grant a license to KFUK.

[Jay Temple]

Originally Posted by Wolf333

West of the Mississippi river, the station letter begin with K. East og the Miss, they start with a W.

(there are some exceptions to this)

Two notable ones: One of the oldest broadcast stations is KDKA in Pittsburgh, and a radio station in Waco, TX, has call letters WACO.

Originally Posted by Johnny Slick

Nah, that's the FCC's rule. East of the Miss, begin with a W, west, K. Also, these call letters are not merely "assigned". You submit them to the FCC and it grants them to you. The station I used to work at, KIRO, was named after the first two letters of Christ's name in Greek, for example. I'm not sure how KUNT got under the radar. I am pretty sure they aren't going to grant a license to KFUK.

No, but according to the story linked in the OP, there is a KCUF in Colorado.

Originally Posted by Johnny Slick

Nah, that's the FCC's rule. East of the Miss, begin with a W, west, K. Also, these call letters are not merely "assigned". You submit them to the FCC and it grants them to you. The station I used to work at, KIRO, was named after the first two letters of Christ's name in Greek, for example. I'm not sure how KUNT got under the radar. I am pretty sure they aren't going to grant a license to KFUK.

In the VERY earliest days of radio, the U.S. Government did assign call letters to radio stations. I don't remember all the sequences, but a couple that I'm familiar with were:

WBAA, WBAB, WBAC, WBAD, WBAE...
WCAA, WCAB, WCAC, WCAD, WCAE...

Possibly as early as 1923 or so, radio stations were able to choose their own vanity call letters. I know that WLS (World's Largest Store) and WGN (World's Greatest Newspaper) in Chicago, which were founded by Sear's and the Chicago Tribune respectively, were vanity call letters.

I can name a few *REAL* stations that indeed have existed at one time or another.

The KLIT-FM referenced above was preceded by the use of those call letters on the AM dial by a station a little ways east of there, in Pomona, in the Seventies. Furthermore, KLIT (1220 AM) was religious!!!

Another religious station, KAKA, currently exists in Salina, Kansas.

CKUA, which is a non-commercial/educational radio network in Alberta, Canada first signed on the air in the 1920's as CFCK.

KTSA, a top-rated rock and roll station in San Antonio in the late Fifties, decided to change their call letters to honor the military presence there. (Several major military bases have called San Antonio home for quite a while.) They picked up the call letters KAKI, to refer to the "khakis" that the soldiers dressed in. The entire idea crashed and burned - not only do I understand that the entire promotion was entirely insipid and pointless in its approach, but KAKI offended the Mexican population in its area as well. (I thought it was KAKA, not KAKI, that was offensive?) Tail-between-their-legs, I believe they returned to KTSA within 3 or 4 weeks.

My favorite of all, though, was another Kansas station. The University of Kansas used to have a radio station (dating back to the 1920's) which "shared the frequency" with a Topeka station. The UofK station's schedule was very limited, and I think that eventually Topeka simply ended up buying the UofK station and shutting it down. "Sharing the frequency" was extremely common in the early days of radio, but the concept is now rather archaic - I think that 4 or 5 of these remain, but I think the only one remaining on AM is in Decorah, Iowa. As with this Kansas one, it's a commercial station sharing schedule with a college station. Oh, you never thought I'd tell you the call letters for this UofK station, did you?



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K F K U was the call letters!

[Johnny Slick]

WEAF may have been one of the first stations to get its own call letters in 1922. It's been said that they didn't like their originally assigned code (another good'un, WDAM) and just got the next combination on the list at the time... but at the same time, that whole "Water Air Earth Fire" bit popped up *really* quickly after they got their letters. Sadly, now it's WFAN...

And I think KDKA might have got its letters before the FCC started handing them out. Don't quote me on that...

[DawnStorm]

KUNT--it's fuzzy but you can get it in!

[Delta-V]

Originally Posted by Wolf333

West of the Mississippi river, the station letter begin with K. East og the Miss, they start with a W.

(there are some exceptions to this)

The boundary used to be farther west until 1923, so the Great Plains states were in the W area. There used to be some old stations here that were on the air before the change to the K prefix (WDAF in Kansas City). WIBW in Topeka was formerly a portable station before settling in K territory.

Originally Posted by prairielooner

K F K U was the call letters!

And they replaced KFKU with KUOK in 1956 (Ugh!)....In 1975 they switched to KJHK and moved to the FM dial.

[Eddylizard]

Originally Posted by DawnStorm

KUNT--it's fuzzy but you can get it in!

I can't get it at all. Perhaps I need a bigger antenna.

[Bill]

Originally Posted by Johnny Slick

And I think KDKA might have got its letters before the FCC started handing them out. Don't quote me on that...

According to KDKA's site, the letters were assigned by the FCC, the next set on the list.

According to another article, stations that already had call letters when the FCC adopted the policy of requiring "K" east of the Mississippi were allowed to keep them.

(article here

http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/C/.../callsigns.htm

Thanks.

Bill

[Bill]

Originally Posted by Johnny Slick

Nah, that's the FCC's rule. East of the Miss, begin with a W, west, K. Also, these call letters are not merely "assigned". You submit them to the FCC and it grants them to you. The station I used to work at, KIRO, was named after the first two letters of Christ's name in Greek, for example. I'm not sure how KUNT got under the radar. I am pretty sure they aren't going to grant a license to KFUK.

I think they would grant the license (but I'm also pretty sure no one would want those call letters):

"Objections to the assignment of requested call signs will not be entertained at the FCC."

(regulation below)

http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_20...cfr73.3550.htm

According to this article, in 1984 the FCC abandoned its previous requirement that call letters be in "good taste":

(article)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...51C0A962948260

In fact, I seem to remember a flap over the call letters WSEX.

There could be a problem, however, under trademark law:

(source below)

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com...1/75689077.pdf

Thanks.

Bill

[Mad Jay]

[hijack]
This thread reminds me. There is a credit union around these parts that used to be called Washington Telephone Federal Credit Union. They used to have a big sign up front, that said WTF Credit Union. Hey, atleast they warn you before they screw you

They changed their name recently to Signal Financial.
[/hijack]

[Elwood]

Another hijack, what is up with some of the new station ID's that combine letters and numbers and may even be more that 4 characters? They look more like amateur radio operator IDs. The local Chrisitian TV station here is W21CJ.