Radio-TV Broadcast History
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Welcome!

Hello! You have entered the Radio-TV Broadcast History Wiki, begun in January 2006. Currently (as of March 19, 2024) there are 4,381 articles that have been created for this Wiki.

The intent of the founder of this Wiki was not so much to discuss program content (though as people become active here, since Wikis tend to be pretty anarchic, they may choose to put in articles relating to program content!) but rather changes in call letters, frequency, and the like. It would be nice if anyone who has information that is relevant would add it to the posted articles.

At first, it seems likely that articles will primarily relate to the AM and FM radio broadcast stations, and the TV channels, of the United States of America. This is not, however, a restriction in the coverage of this Wiki, but merely a function of the fact that the Wiki's founder is an American and has access to information mainly on US stations. People with interest in, and knowledge about, the history of stations in other countries are welcome to add their information.

To search for data on a specific station, you can go either to the Alphabetical index of call letters and go downward from there, or to the list of Call letters by country. Alternatively, you can go directly to the page entitled [[Chronology of call letters ????]], where the questikon marks are replaced by the actual call letters of the station.

NOTICE!
PLEASE READ!

Recently, people have been posting pages that are not historical material on broadcast stations, but ads for non-broadcast Web-based stations. This is doubly off-topic. This Wiki deals with historical information and is not an advertising site, and it does not concern itself with Web sites imitating broadcast stations. If your "station" does not broadcast over the air, it is not within the subject matter of this Wiki!

Articles copied from Wikipedia are welcome, if they are relevant to the topic. However, it will usually be the case that a direct copy will create a lot of red links, unless you do some editing to remedy this. Please, if you are copying an article from Wikipedia, look at these hints for editors copying Wikipedia articles.

It seems that people have been editing here without reading the hints for editors copying Wikipedia articles referred to in the previous paragraph. Please note that, as a result of this, we have now blocked anonymous editing, so that people editing here will have accounts and can receive communications. We do want people to add content here, but we do some things differently from Wikipedia and editors should become familiar with these differences.


At this point, we used to say, "It is recommended that you create an account, if you have not yet done so." We have gone further now; it is required that you create an account if you wish to edit articles on this Wiki. Please click on the Log in link at the top, and follow the instructions there.

If you have experience with Wikipedia or some of the other Wikia sites, you may already know how to edit pages on this Wiki. If you want help in editing, see the Broadcasting:How to edit an article page.

At least at first, the largest number of articles will be chronologies of the use of various call letters. There are some templates that have been made available in order to help with the creation of these chronology articles. For help in this, see the Broadcasting:How to create a chronology article page.

NEW: Since people have not been using the old setup on Broadcasting:How to create a chronology article, I assume it's been too complicated. If you're creating new chronologies, please try the new setup there. It should be easier.

If you want to send a message to the creator of this Wiki, you can edit the page at User talk:BRG. Before doing that, you should be logged in to an account you have created, so that you can be identified and a reply can be directed to you.

If you are interested in the subject matter of this Wiki, you may want to join the associated mailing list.

A lot of the information in this Wiki will be in the form of tables including date ranges. It would be a good idea if we all conformed to certain standards in entering this kind of data. Naturally, since this is a Wiki and there is a certain amount of anarchy in the Wiki format, it can't be insisted upon, but I think we'll all be better served if we try to be consistent.

The following ways are recommended for representing dates:

  • A range such as "January 3, 1940-August 23, 1950" means that the beginning and end date are both definitely known.
  • A range such as "January 3, 1940-August 23, 1950..." with three dots after the end means that the beginning is definitely known, but the end is only known to be no earlier than the cited date.
  • A range such as "...January 3, 1940-August 23, 1950" with three dots before the beginning means that the end is definitely known, but the beginning is only known to be no later than the cited date.
  • A range such as "...January 3, 1940-August 23, 1950..." with three dots before the beginning and three dots after the end means that neither the beginning nor the end is definitely known, but the beginning is known to be no later than the cited date and the end is known to be no earlier than the cited date.
  • A range such as "...January 3, 1940..." with three dots before and three dots after a single date means that neither the beginning nor the end is definitely known, but the range of dates is known to include the cited date.

Much of the information here comes from other sources on the Web. Particular thanks are to be given to Jeff Miller for permission to use his data tables.

Useful links[]

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