Just watched an update from NBC New York about the crash... it's interesting how they were able to use live video of the crash site from a competing station (WB New York)
Just to update you, one of the three men on board the helicopter walked free from the wreckage and although the other two had to be cut free, their injuries are described as 'not serious'.
What is it with American TV names - what the hell is WNYW supposed to stand for?
"Next on WCBS - CBS2..." - makes UKTV G2 almost catchy!
All commercial television stations in the US use called letter to identify themselves from each other. In your quote about your refer to the station using the network name the channel number and the call sign. That almost never happens. Only on the channel idents. They would normally say "Next on CBS 2". WNYW is the FOX affiliate for NYC. Its an owned and operated station, meaning its owned and operated by the FOX network. W is the beginning letter for most stations east of the Mississippii River. NY obivously stands for New York and the W is because there is a Public Radio station the uses WNYC-FM already. So they may have picked it to differentiate itself. But they would have been well in their rights to choose WNYC-TV as their is no TV station to my knowledge in New York with those call signals. But their may be some small low power station that snagged it already.
Nope, no idea what you're talking about - and if
I
don't understand it, how your average American manages God only knows!
Why do they all have a W in front? Oh, forget about it! Trying to understand Americans is like trying to get inside the brain of a woman!
Nope, no idea what you're talking about - and if
I
don't understand it, how your average American manages God only knows!
Why do they all have a W in front? Oh, forget about it! Trying to understand Americans is like trying to get inside the brain of a woman!
They're call signs, issued by the FCC to each individual station/transmitter. They agreed on having the call signs in the eastern US start with "W" many decades ago at an International Telecommunications Union (ITU) conference. Don't ask me why they picked "W", they just did.
And not all American stations have call signs beginning with "W". Those west of the Mississippi River generally have call signs starting with "K". (Again, don't ask me why they picked that.) For example, KTLA in Los Angeles (as ED mentioned).
What's the point of call signs? They're devised to be a standard means by which to differentiate various stations. It goes way back to radiotransmissions from ships, with different ships assigned different call signs. When radio broadcasting on land became a reality, the practice of assigning call letters was adopted for radio stations (and later, TV stations). They're just like ID numbers on your student card, driver's license, etc., just that they're used to identify terrestrial broadcast outlets. (And it just happens that many North American stations used to, and many still do, identify themselves on air by their call signs.)
I think that TV and radio transmitters in the UK actually have call signs too... They just never mention them on the air.
(BTW, there did use to be a TV station with the call sign WNYC-TV. It was a public TV station on channel 31 in NYC, and was indeed a counterpart to WNYC radio. Later it was sold to Paxson, which made it into Pax 31 [WPXN], the flagship to his largely ignored family-oriented network.)
Nope, no idea what you're talking about - and if
I
don't understand it, how your average American manages God only knows!
It is quite simple in principle - each transmitting station has a diffrent call sign, usually 4 letters eg. WGHK. These letters in most cases don't mean anything in particular
If the same callsign is used by more than one station it's suffixed by the type of station: '-FM', '-AM' or '-TV'
With TV they often add the channel number at the end eg. WGHL-TV channel 10. Remember that channel numbers work diffrently there to they do here.
Quote:
Why do they all have a W in front? Oh, forget about it!
I think that TV and radio transmitters in the UK actually have call signs too... They just never mention them on the air.
Think so, Amateur radio users do have call signs starting with 2 or G.
A full list of international callsigns here: http://daveg4otu.tripod.com/pref.html Although in most countries they're only used by non-broadacst use such as planes
Remember that broadcasting is set up diffrently in the US.... whereby here the national channels broadcast on hundreds of transmitters across the country, in the US it's 1 station using 1 transmitter with 1 callsign.
If the american system was used here each individual transmitter would need a diffrent callsign, so ITV1 London could be something like GFHK-TV channel 23.... but it would only be that from Crystal Palace
Nope, no idea what you're talking about - and if
I
don't understand it, how your average American manages God only knows!
Why do they all have a W in front? Oh, forget about it! Trying to understand Americans is like trying to get inside the brain of a woman!
The average American doesn't understand the system per se... but Americans do recognize their own local station by their call sign. Also, a lot of people who participate in ratings books sometimes have to write down the station they are watching... so that's why a lot of stations use their call signs in their branding.
Nope, no idea what you're talking about - and if
I
don't understand it, how your average American manages God only knows!
Why do they all have a W in front? Oh, forget about it! Trying to understand Americans is like trying to get inside the brain of a woman!
The average American doesn't understand the system per se... but Americans do recognize their own local station by their call sign. Also, a lot of people who participate in ratings books sometimes have to write down the station they are watching... so that's why a lot of stations use their call signs in their branding.
Isn't it an FCC requirement to mention (either in audio or video) the channel call-sign every hour or so?
Also - don't Australian Radio (or is it TV) stations have a number/letter callsign - you often see them on microphones at Aussie news conferences.
UK broadcast radio transmitters used to have call signs - the most famous being 2LO - though I'm not aware of them for current UHF UK TV transmitted services. I think the service name (BBC One South East) and the UHF channel number (21-69) normally suffices, though the transmitter name can also be used as well?
As others have said the UK and US TV landscape is really massively different. The UK concept of 4 or 5 national networks with occasional regional variations and a national identity is very different to the concept of local stations with a local identity who take some network branded, or syndicated, output.
In the UK we identify our broadcasters by a logical channel number 1-5 which bears no link at all to the broadcast channel (i.e. frequency) they transmit on -- our TVs are tuned in when we install them to put BBC One on pre-set 1 (though it could be broadcast on any frequency)
In the US the channel number is actually the frequency (in channel number layout) that the station is broadcasting on - and pre-sets are less important?
