Electure,

The three letter call sign has nothing to do with the channel designation.

It is merely a VERY old station...the first call signs given out by the Federal Radio Commision (predecessor to the FCC) used three letters (KHJ Los Angeles, KYW Philadelphia, WBZ Boston, WOR New York, WLS Chicago).

Some famous "clear channel" (not to be confused with the company of that same name) stations with four letter call signs that have been around forever are WABC New York, WEAF (defunct) New York, KABC Los Angeles, KIRO Seattle, WMAQ (defunct) Chicago.

The FCC no longer assigns three-letter calls. However in special cases, they will let you get your original three-letter call sign back if you happen to own the curent station at that exact dial position.

This happened a couple of years ago with KHJ/Los Angeles which had switched to KKHJ and then was permitted to change back to KHJ.

The reason was (and I'm not joking) because KKHJ was a Spanish statoin and management said that if you said the call letters in Spanish it would sound like this: KA KA ACHE JOTA (hard J).

In Spanish, KA KA (actually written caca) is slang for feces. So you get the idea. [Linked Image]

So now the station IDs itself as KA AHCHE JOTA (hard J)

Sorry.....I'm a radio geek...so this is one thread that got me hooked [Linked Image]