WNBC New York's Newschopper 4 Crashes

Meanwhile, the FCC oblige the stations to mention it on air, as close to the top of the hour as possible - although with some stations, they tend to do this as fast as possible. I heard one radio station squeeze it in between two adverts, in a "small print"-style voiceover.

Yeah US/Canadian/Mexican stations broadcast on the actual channel number they ID themselves as.

In America, the station does have to ID themselves once every hour - in any means possible. This means either a standard 5-second animation, or even as simple as a super-imposed logo over regular programming. Canada has the same rule, except they don't have to ID their call sign.

In Australia, there are call signs for all broadcast stations. For television, the last letter in the call sign stands for the state the station broadcasts in...

eg) Seven Melbourne is HSV7 - V is the Australian state "Victoria", and HS stations for "Herald Sydney"... the original owners of Seven Melbourne. (The first two letters can be anything and can stand for anything as well)

I have no idea how Australian radio call signs stand for... but I guess radio stations call signs start with the number and a 2-letter code.

And as someone else has mentioned, every station in every part of the world does have a call sign - it's listed with the International Telecommunications Union... a UN organization.

Actually, that's the case with most stations now. Many TV stations put their legal IDs (the combination of call sign and city of license, which is required to be aired as close to TOTH as possible, as you mentioned) in TINY print and in colours that clash with the background image.

Also, during live coverage of news or sports events, you'll often see the local TV stations putting up an aston, or even just plain text, of their legal IDs on screen at TOTH. I don't think the FCC really cares about stations doing legal IDs anymore though; they're more worried about nipples on screen.

To answer the other question: I don't think I've actually seen a TV set here that has pre-set features, so I doubt most people here know of such a thing. (I only know about the pre-set feature because I've lived in Hong Kong, where pre-sets are also popular.) Some members on an American TV board had asked why BBC One was on channel 1 everywhere, so I assume the concept of pre-sets is foreign to them.


That's mostly the case, although sometimes you'll find a local TV station identifying itself by its cable channel number rather than its terrestrial channel. For example, WCNC-TV 36 in Charlotte identified itself as "NBC 6", as it's carried on cable channel 6 in the Charlotte area. Most of these stations are usually UHF stations, since as you know, VHF TV stations have remained very popular in North America (mostly due to having been on air longer than the UHF stations and built a following), which places UHF stations at a disadvantage.

And due to the fact viewers start channel surfing at "2" and move up.

Oh go on, tell us why they don't start at 1!!!

What a great promo! They certainly know how to use the flashy effects in the States. I know 'whizz-bang' graphics can get annoying, but at least they make the effort. Over here it always seems to be like,'*sigh* 'let's slap together a new promo using some file footage of recent news stories, ooh, and maybe a quick shot of our van outside a courthouse or something...'

Back to the link above, I did expect a Gillette Mach3Turbo to come whizzing out of the sky and the pilot to rub his smooth face at one point though..

Channel 1 is not available for television because the frequency channel 1 sits on is reserved for certain radio frequencies - police, fire services, etc... (44-50 MHz).

No one in North America broadcasts over-the-air on channel 1 - they used to back when TV was first starting up, but not anymore. Though some digital cable services have started using channel 1 as a program guide.