1 of 1- paterson1
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The Other CKFM...Olds Alberta's 96.5 CKFM
Today came across the jingle of the day on the RadioWest.ca site. Jingle of the day was for an All Hit Country station in Olds Alberta, 96.5 CKFM. But call letters for Virgin Radio in Toronto are still officially CKFM, with the station branded as Virgin. What gives??
Well as it turns out the the Alberta station's official calls are CKLJ and for some reason they chose to be known on air as CKFM. Here are their jingles from the early 2000's when they went to air at 35,000 watts..
- Radiowiz
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Re: The Other CKFM...Olds Alberta's 96.5 CKFM
Yup. They were indeed around when Mix 999 was around.
Fortunately, they are in different markets, so nobody cares about any potential confusion.
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- Paul Jeffries
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Re: The Other CKFM...Olds Alberta's 96.5 CKFM
Radiowiz wrote:
Yup. They were indeed around when Mix 999 was around.
Fortunately, they are in different markets, so nobody cares about any potential confusion.
Plus, other than the top-of-the-hour legal IDs, 99.9 in Toronto hasn't identified themselves as CKFM for about 33 years.
Interesting to note, 99.9 in Toronto had changed their call letters to CFMX-FM for a short while in 2007, but reverted back to the CKFM calls when they discovered the new call letters shared the same ID as CFMZ-FM's repeater station in Toronto, which was originally based in Cobourg at the time. Nowadays, the Cobourg Classical FM station holds the CFMX calls.
PJ
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- RadioActive
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Re: The Other CKFM...Olds Alberta's 96.5 CKFM
At least the station out west has different call letters.
There are least two other weird anomalies like this in the U.S.
Everybody around here is familiar with WBEN-AM from Buffalo at 930 on the AM dial. But in Philadelphia, there's a station called WBEN-FM (they go by "Ben-FM" on air) that has the exact same call letters. How in the world was that allowed to happen?
Another odd example of this is at least within the same state. KCBS-AM is an all news radio station in San Francisco owned by Audacy. KCBS-TV is the CBS O&O in Los Angeles, some 380 miles away. Same call letters, different cities.
- AspectRatio
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Re: The Other CKFM...Olds Alberta's 96.5 CKFM
Everybody around here is familiar with WBEN-AM from Buffalo at 930 on the AM dial. But in Philadelphia, there's a station called WBEN-FM (they go by "Ben-FM" on air) that has the exact same call letters. How in the world was that allowed to happen?
I found some interesting reading here about that. Quite fascinating. I excerpted a few of the lines from one of the post, but it looks like the "-FM" is a unique identifier such that the first four digits are allowed to be shared:
"- WFRG and WFRG-FM are different callsigns. The "-FM" is part of the call.
- The -FM (or -TV) suffix is not required for a FM or TV station, but the station may opt to request it.
- If there is already another station with the same "base call" (the first four letters) then the -FM or -TV suffix is required.
- There is no such thing as an "-AM" suffix. At least not officially with the FCC. So if the owners of WNPT-FM bought an AM station, they could NOT use WNPT-AM. They'd have to choose an entirely different callsign unless they convinced the TV station to add the -TV suffix.
- Because you can't have a duplicate callsign, if WFRG already exists as an AM station, if you want to have WFRG on a FM station you must use the -FM suffix.
- At the same time, if you have just WFRG (no suffix) on a FM station there can be no WFRG(AM). (because you can't get a -AM suffix)"
- RadioActive
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Re: The Other CKFM...Olds Alberta's 96.5 CKFM
Wow, I had no idea. I was always under the impression that a set of call letters belongs to a station (unless they changed them.) It was the one unique thing they had that no one else could claim. (I remember when a disc jockey on WNBC said, "This is WNBC New York. No other station can make that statement." It was meant as a joke, but under these rules, it would no longer be applicable.)
I suppose the fact so few stations bother with their call signs anymore, except at the top of the hour (preferring brandings like "Q107" or "Country 98" or something similar) means most don't care if anyone else uses them, especially in another city or state.
But it kind of disappoints me that the one thing that made a station unique - its own call letters - is no longer sacrosanct.