The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 320

8 tf.W 2f 1 1 -'Ay ra iji' i Ji 'V4 A I ir V'fl A "p- v- There is also WLPL in Baltimore of Pleasant which harkens back to the slogan calls of the 1920's. There are others. WFDS, for instance, which hit the waves in the late 1950's, was the brainchild of William S. Cook, a local engineer. His FM station went on before the FCC established one system and standards for stereo broadcasting and he conducted experiments in that field, playing classical music in stereo.

At that time Capitol Records promoted its classical albums under the slogan, "Full Dimensional Sound." The phrase appealed to Cook, who with a slight change to "Full Dimension Sound" appropriated the slogan for his station and its call letters. WFDS had a short (and stormy) career before its these letters joined many others in limbo. Its next owners, the Hearst Corporation, maintained the classical music format for many years, under WBAL-FM. But it has now become one of the top-three rock stations, the highly successful WPY-FM, 98 Rock. WFMM (Fine Music for Maryland) has now become WPOC.

Before that happened David Fuellhart, the present station manager, and Jack Thayer, then head of Nationwide Communications (the present owner), researched the possibilities. They settled on WPOC, with a possible meaning of "Pride of the Chesapeake," but felt that the slogan shouldn't be used until the station became more of a force in the community. The station once ran a contest asking listeners to suggest a slogan from the call letters. The winning slogan was: "Pride of the Chesapeake!" But the station has yet to make serious use of the slogan, either on the air or in its publicity. And although the meaning of WBMD is clear, it too, once asked listers to make up slogans from its call letters.

Someone plugged hard for "Where Blessings Multiply Daily," but the winner was "Where Better Music Dominates." And when it comes to slogans, consider the "unofficial" variety. The first station in Cumberland had the call letters WTBO. Whatever that may have meant to the owners, to many listeners the station was affectionately known as "Why Tubes Blow Out." Non-commercial stations haven't escaped problems with their call letters and most of them arise from slogans, too. Morgan State and Towson State, for instance, would have liked to use WMSU and WTSU, but those were already taken, so they had to settle for something else. Towson, which first just covered the campus, used WVTS, the Voice of Towson State.

After it expanded to FM status, they decided to use WCVT the Community Voice of Towson, hoping to attract listeners off-campus. It didn't work out. They considered changing the slogan to "College Voice of Towson," but, by that time, it had become a university. The station is still WCVT, but no longer pretends to stand for anything. In the early 1970's, when planning a station at Morgan State, students researched and "brain-stormed" various Continued on Page 21 Georges county use principles which could easily be used elsewhere.

Maryland's Public Television system also uses geographical designations for most of its stations. The main station in Owings Mills is WMPB, Maryland Public Broadcasting, but there's also WAPB in Annapolis, WCPB (Chesapeake Public Broadcasting) on the Eastern Shore and WWPB in Washington county. And there are call letters which seem to "just fit" the places in the state they call home. Such as WNAV in Annapolis and WETT in Ocean City. ment of his call letters, WFMD, standing for Frederick, Md.

So now there's WAMD (Aberdeen), WCMD (Cumberland), WEMD (Easton), WLMD (Laurel), which recently applied to the FCC to change its call letters to WBYA, and WBMD (Baltimore). The geographical location of the station has been the basis for other combinations, too. Probably the most ingenious is WTTR, a contraction of the name of its hometown Westminster. This principle might be difficult to copy, but, WVOB, the Voice of Belair, and WPGC in Prince FCC allowed it to revive the three-letter call. The "first syllable" principle was one pattern of using geographical location as a basis for choosing call letters.

There are others. What you might call the "M-D" principle, for instance. "Major" Laurence Leonard was a pioneer Maryland broadcaster with a station in Frederick in the mid-1 930's. For decades he repulsed all attempts to put any other station into his rich Frederick market. But he did have one thing which others took and used freely: the arrange.