Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway
From: msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Radio Station Names (Australia, Canada, HCJB)
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Date: 25 Sep 89 05:33:48 GMT
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X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 408, message 8 of 9

> There is apparently no international requirement that radio stations
> all have call letters conforming to the international (ITU) plan.  If
> there were such a requirement, Australian stations would have call
> letters starting with AX, VH-VN, or VZ.
>
> For that matter, the Australian call signs mentioned above overlap all
> over areas of the naming space reserved by the ITU for other countries.
> For example, 2PK (indeed, *all* calls starting with a 2) "should" be in
> Great Britain; 3AK ought to be in Monaco; and 3MMM belongs in China.

When I visited New Zealand, I found that their radio stations also
use call signs of one digit and some letters, the digit denoting which
part of the country the station is in.   Christchurch area stations
began with 3, for example; I remember 3BZ.  (Z pronounced zed, of course.)

The person who pointed this out to me, however, also said that the
*official* call letters of each station included a prefix which was
the ITU code for New Zealand.  I think that that was NZ -- some of them
do have mnemonic value! -- so that 3BZ was really NZ3BZ but mostly did
not mention that.  So perhaps Australians do the same thing.

It is not unknown for individual stations here in North America to
adopt this approach; in Toronto, CKEY on 590 kHz is "KEY 590" in
all its advertisements nowadays, and in Buffalo, WGR on 550 kHz is
"GR 55" in theirs.  There must be many other examples.  (Hint: too many
for it to be interesting for everyone to see the ones in YOUR hometown.)


Mark Brader		"'Settlor', (i) in relation to a testamentary trust,
Toronto			 means the individual referred to in paragraph (i)."
utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com		-- Income Tax Act of Canada, 108(1)(h)