The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 322

(5 Call Letters Continued from Vaye 19 Everlasting flowers by Kirk Remember that special day with sterling or pewter flowers. The Kirk "Flower of the Month" collection makes a lovely gift for her birthday, anniversary or any special date. Shown, September's flower, the Aster. January Carnation, February Violet, March Jonquil, April Daisy, May Lily of the Valley, June Rose, July Larkspur, August Poppy, October Cosmos, November Chrysanthemum, December Narcissus. Sterling Pewter Bracelet 32.50 9.50 Stickpin $10 7.50 Earrings 16.50 $10 Pendant $10 7.50 Silver, all stores A call letter possibilities.

Several of their suggestions accompanied the application for a license. The FCC issued Morgan WEAA. The students meant this to stand for "We Educate Afro-Americans," but it's a slogan that has never been used. The letters WBJC once stood for Baltimore Junior College. The school has changed its name, but the established call letters of the area's first non-commercial station remain.

The simplest, easiest-to-understand local educational call is WJHU-FM at Johns Hopkins University. Starting as a carrier-current station, it simply added a FM" when reaching that designation. Other area education stations have done the same: Anne Arundel Community College is WACC; Sparrows Point High School is WSPH; Harford Community College would have liked WHCC, but settled for the similar WHFC. There are other ways that radio stations came by their call letters. Some think WRBS is called that because it devotes its entire broadcast schedule to religious programming, and the "RB" stands for Religious Broadcasting.

Not so! They stand for a man named Reynolds, one-time owner, whose company was the Reynolds Broadcasting System. WBFF stands for "Baltimore Forty-Five" and the same owners have a station in Pittsburgh where the call letters are WPTT, "Pittsburgh Twenty-Two." These identify channel numbers. Sam Kravetz, the new licensee for Baltimore's UHF Channel 54, has chosen the call WNUV, from the name of his company, New Visions, Inc. Call letters, of course, are assigned and used so that listeners can know what station they're listening to. In the beginning and up through radio's Golden Age, schedules were made up of programs drama, music, news, comedy, variety each in a neat package of 15 minutes (or 30 or 60 or whatever).

Stations identified themselves only on the "breaks" between the programs, just as TV does today. When television took over the big entertainment programs, radio programming was converted to a continuing flow of recorded music and short information items. Once that happened, it was possible to identify a station every few minutes. Commercial success became more and more dependent on the ratings and ratings depended upon listeners accurately reporting what station(s) they listened to, so this frequent repetition of call letters became vital. As TV developed it became obvious that there were more lessons to be learned.

When the TV audiences reported its viewing habits to the rating services, many of them remembered the channel numbers 2, 11 or 13 better than they remembered the letters. Was it possible that radio's emphasis on call letters was wrong? Would it be more effective to emphasize the station's dial position the way television did? And, how could radio do that? TV had simple one and two digit numbers to recall. Radio had more complicated four digit dial positions. Could they be simplified? They could indeed. Just lop off the excess zeroes at the end of each station's assigned position.

And so there is Radio 1-2-3 (WITH), Super 14 (WWIN), Radio 60 (WCAO), Mad Radio 13 (WFBR) and others. Then someone noticed that radio dials sets are not calibrated too precisely. They could be slightly out of adjustment without seriously affecting reception. This made it possible to round off other dial positions. Simply adopting the closest, simplest number, led to WBAL, assigned to 1090, calling itself Radio 11; WNAV, assigned to 1430, becoming 14.

This is how most FM stations simplified their channel assignments, too. FM channels are numbered in tenths of a mega-Hertz (mHz), and the decimals complicate their station identification. One-oh-five-point-seven, one-oh-six-point-five and ninety-three-point-one are hard to remember and they don't roll off the tongue easily. The stations have rounded off the fractions, however, and you know them now as 106 (WMAR), 107 (WKTK) and 93 (WPOC). Religious and educational stations have generally retained the decimals.

What about KTK, DJQ, IYY, BKZ and the others? Do they mean anything? No. But they still are the result of careful, concerned planning. KTK and IYY were chosen for their ear-catching sound. They roll "trippingly on the tongue," they fall pleasantly on the ear, and, it's hoped, they make an immediate indelible impression on the brains of those elusive members of the audience who fill out diaries for the all-important rating services. When WFBR bought WISZ-FM in Glen Burnie, why did it change the call letters to WBKZ Harry Shriver, FBR's general manager, recalls having seen some semi-confidential research about "Hot Letters," and admits he may have been influenced by it.

Some listeners and agencies have assumed that the new call is some modern perversion of "because," but it's not. Mr. Shriver insists that it means nothing. 1-7 Jy. 'Iks )i 1 ij VI 21 We can fill your order by phone1 Call 578-4040, Monday-Friday 10 A.M.

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