Ongoing History Daily: How to name a radio station
The official designation for a radio station is a three- or four-letter combination of letters. This is known as a station’s “call letters.” There are rules for this sort of thing that date back to the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.
Back then, radio was a brand-new technology, and there was zero regulation. It was chaos. Following the Titanic disaster, a series of international decisions to bring order to the situation. That year, 37 countries met to assign official radio call signals in order to identify the origin of broadcasts. In the years that followed, Canadian radio stations were assigned call letters beginning with the letters CF, CH, CI, CK, or CJ. The only exceptions are the CBC (they all begin with CB) and Newfoundland, which has kept their original call letter designation for some outlets that start with V.
In the US, stations east of the Mississippi call letters begin with a W. West of the Mississippi, they begin with K. (There are a few exceptions, but we’ll leave those aside.) Mexico got XE, Japan got JO, Spain got S.
Today, every country has its own call letter designations.
