Thursday, August 03, 2006 It’s time for us to pick out call letters for the new stations!

It’s time for some creativity! What call signs do you think would work, and why?  Here are some tips:

1) West of the Mississippi, all call signs start with the letter “K�.

2) The obvious signs are probably taken, especially calls that spell a word, like KING or KTOP.

3) The calls we choose should be easy to say aloud.  KWBW, for example, is really hard to say.  KONE is easy to say (but it’s taken).

4) Often calls have place significance.  KJUD, for example, stands for Juneau-Douglas.  KTKU for Taku.  KJNO for Juneau.  KSTK stands for Stikine, and KFSK stands for fisk, which is Norwegian for fish.

5) Sometimes call signs are funny, or an inside joke.  KCHU in Valdez is a sneeze.  KWMD in Anchorage stands for “Weapon of Mass Discussion.â€?  The call letters KMXT stand for Michael X. Tremaine, the on-air name of the first manager. 

6) The meaning of KTOO is somewhat vague, except that we’ve heard the founders liked KBOO in Portland.

7) If a call sign we like is taken by a TV, AM or LP station, we can ask their permission to use it for one of our FM stations.  Likewise if a call is reserved by the Coast Guard, we can probably get it released.

E-mail your ideas using the comments form below, and we’ll check the FCC database to see if they are available!

Have fun…