Call Letters

A. J., I am sick that the radio stations nowadays are not giving their callsigns out any more...it hardly is worth it any more to tune one, then wait until the top of the hour...some used to break for news at the bottom of the hour and announce there, as well as several times during the hour...now, it's (what THEY think) snappy smart-aleck slogans instead of callsigns. Who cares if they're "Pirate 106" or "Blue Sky 94, Easy Listening"? I want to know WHO they are and where they are and let the slogan FOLLOW the callsign!

As a Ham radio operator, if I don't i.d. every ten minutes, I get in trouble and it's a HOBBY! Why can't a business be required to i.d. at the required times? I'll tell you why: a weak, defunded FCC and strong lobbyists in Congress FOR the radio conglomerates...and you know the old saying about how money talks? Bud, Mobile, AL

Right you are Bud. Radio programmers are like sheep. If someone is successful everyone follows. From the beginning of broadcasting, call letters were a badge of honor as well as identification. When trying to find great call letters, we were often twarted by a ship at sea. There were some very good K___ assigned to a ship. Some stations over came weak call letters with great jingles. WDGY comes to mind. Hard to say, doesn't spell anything. KFWB is another. Hard to say, but lots of great jingles got the call letters across. IF stations use jingles today, they are shotgun meaningless blurbs. The entire "sound" of a station could be built around a good jingle package in the old days.
I notice XM radio uses some great jingles very effectively.