Monday, November 24, 2008

Something VERY interesting...

EDIT 2:16AM: Hold on a minute here...something interesting. It seems that at last report, WKRP IS a licensed TV station already...as WKRP-LP is apparently licensed in Alexandria, Tennessee! If I am right, I don't believe you can use call letters that are already being used. Unless the rules are different with it being -LP vs. -CA, one of the two will have to drop those calls...we here at TSMW will continue to follow this story...


EDIT 1:52AM: Upon watching the station on what will henceforth be called the TSMW-HDTV (meaning the Tri-State Media Watch High Definition Television), which gets Insight Digital 3.0 cable (on which the channel in question is Channel 189), the station IS indeed broadcasting as WKRP Cincinnati (even while being id'ed in the Insight-powered program guide as still being WBQC). Original item below...

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It seems the former home of UPN in Cincinnati has new, or are they old, call letters...for now.

Formerly WBQC-CA Channel 38 is now...WKRP-TV? Seems Elliot Block, owner of Block Broadcasting, now is using the call letters made famous by the TV show "WKRP In Cincinnati" for that station. And, www.wbqc.com now re-directs to a splash screen, which if you click on that, re-directs to...wkrp.tv.

It's unclear as to whether or not this is a copyright/trademark violation. My guess would be on "no", seeing as, if I am correct, the people responsible for the TV show will fight it - but then again, they ARE actual, legal call letters (that have been used on radio in the past). So they can't exactly tell people NOT to use them...the FCC has the final say.

Also, it remains to be seen if WKRC-TV or its owners at Newport Television will object, with the call letters being just one away from THAT. THAT alone may cause the FCC to pull the license unless a change is made.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A station can have the same call letters as long as the suffixes are different. WKRP-LP is different from WKRP-TV. Just like WKRC has WKRC-TV and WKRC-AM.

J. Moses said...

Thanks for clarifying that.