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Off by a Dash or Two

Your broadcast history is off a bit

I enjoy the “Radio World Engineering Extra” and found the article on Page 1 of the April 14 issue (“Modern VHF Signal Measurement Techniques at NPR Labs”) to be most interesting. But your broadcast history is off a bit.

The Detroit station where the measurements were done in 1950 is WWJ-TV, not “WJZ(TV)”. In 1950, WWJ-TV was the station using Channel 4 in Detroit. WJZ-TV operated on Channel 7 in New York City at the time. It is now WABC-TV, having adopted that call sign in March, 1953.

Also, the call sign has a hyphen in it. The use of “(TV)” or “(FM)” is for call signs that do not have the -FM or -TV suffix as part of the call sign. Hence, in New York, WJZ was the AM station on 770 kHz (now WABC), WJZ-FM was the FM station on 95.5 MHz — now WPLJ(FM) — and WJZ-TV was the television station on Channel 7. But WGHF(FM) was the FM station on 101.9 MHz and WQXR-FM was on 96.3 MHz. The latter station had the suffix because there was a WQXR on the AM band. The historic WJZ call letters now reside in Baltimore. Westinghouse changed the call letters of WAAM(TV) to WJZ-TV in 1957 upon acquiring that station. CBS, which now owns WJZ-TV, changed the call letters of its WJFK and WQSR(FM) to WJZ and WJZ-FM, respectively.

Philip E. Galasso
Chief Engineer
Citadel Wilkes-Barre/Scranton
Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

Ed. Note: Some years ago, after debate, Radio World adopted an editorial style rule of identifying all broadcast licenses on first reference with the suffix AM, FM or TV in parentheses. Thus the station licensed as KIIS-FM is written here as KIIS(FM) on first reference and KIIS subsequently. We acknowledge that this was heresy to some devoted radio call sign fans.

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