Why are Amplitude Modulation Radio Broadcasitng Stations east of the Mississippie River start with Letter W an

Question

Amplitude MOdulation Broadcast Stations (AM) east of the Mississipit start with W (except for KDKA) and those West of the Mississippi AM Radio Stations begin with the letter K? Is it a law or only a t radition? If it's a Law, please provide citation.

Answer 1

It was a staff policy of the Bureau of Navigation (later the FCC), under the authority of the Radio Act of 1912. K and W prefixes were in use long before the 1927 conference mentioned in the wiki article.

Answer 2

Initially the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) which is the governmental department which issued and controlled the licenses had a policy that stations East of the Mississippi would start with the letter W and stations West of the Mississippi would start with the letter K. This worked well for several years, but as there became more and more stations it became too cumbersome to try to only use 4 letters with the first one K or W.
If they did this they would have had to go back and rename all of the existing with another letter.

Answer 3

Ahh, but don't forget the prefixes A and N. Both are the property of the USA. You know N very well, in fact. Go look at an airplane. Painted on its sides and wings are its name, which starts with N. That is because the name of the airplane is actually the FCC license of its radio. If you ever see a British plane, you will see that its number begins with G. It's radio license, using the British radio prefix.

Answer 4

Follow the Wiki link for a good general explanation of how the FCC assigns call signs to broadcast stations.

Answer 5

See:

http://ask.yahoo.com/20000112.html

Answer 6

Just a convention followed by the FCC. TV stations and FM radio follows the same naming.

Answer 7

It relates to how the F.C.C divides up the RF bandwidth.
Check out this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_letters