Color!

[Kokopelli]

WKY is either the only or is one of two stations (memory is a little fuzzy) west of the Mississippi that start with a "W" rather than a "K". That is because it/they were already well established before the FCC came out with the rule.

[Jim Kyle]

I believe it's now the only one; the other was WNAD, the official station of the University of Oklahoma at 640 on the dial, which got shut down quite a few years ago...

[ctchandler]

Jim,
That certainly doesn't surprise me. The Gaylord organization has always been on the "bleeding edge" of a lot of things. As for "local" or network stations, you're probably correct, I don't know. I just know that I read articles after Mr. Gaylord died about some of the things the Oklahoman, WKY radio and WKY television had done over the years. They could easily have been the first "local" station.
C. T.

Actually I meant local stations as distinct from network origination stations. I'll have to check this with Johnny Shannon, who was their chief photographer for many years including those very early years. I do know that the control console used for color production at that time was designed and built by WKY-TV staff, and later copied by the networks.

[ctchandler]

Kokopell,
The "W" stood for Westinghouse, what did the "K" mean? I could google it but since I was here, I thought I would ask.
C. T.

WKY is either the only or is one of two stations (memory is a little fuzzy) west of the Mississippi that start with a "W" rather than a "K". That is because it/they were already well established before the FCC came out with the rule.

[Jim Kyle]

Both the W and the K simply mean that the stations are licensed by and located in the USA. In the earliest days of radio, anyone who built a station (mostly ham operators) simply used their initials as their call sign. In the 1920s, an international conference decided to standardize call sign assignment, and parceled out various letters of the alphabet to various nations. Great Britain got "G" and the US got K, N, and W. We decided to reserve "N" for Navy stations and use K and W for all civilian operations (I'm not sure what the Army did in those days; they may have still been using semaphore flags).

The very first commercial radio station was KDKA, on the east coast. WKY was one of the earliest, too, although it began as a ham station that Mr. G. bought soon after it went on the air.

At first the W and K prefixes were used all over the country, but before long the FCC ruled that commercial stations east of the Mississippi would use W and those to the west would use K. Incidentally, that may be one reason why the TV show "WKRP in Cinncinnati" used W -- it would not have been a valid call sign unless the station, like KDKA or WKY, had been licensed before the ruling went into effect.

Ham stations all around the country got the W prefix until some time after WW2. The country was divided into ten zones; Oklahoma is in Zone 5. At first, established operators who had been using their initials got them assigned; a notable case was George Grammer, a founder of the American Radio Relay League, who became W1GG. After all the 2-letter calls had been issued, the FCC moved on to 3-letter combinations, but the combinations were never duplicated in other zones. After WW2, all of the 3-letter combinations were used up, and at that time the K prefix came into use. My own call, assigned in 1957, was K5JKX; getting my initials in it was a happy accident. Once the K-series were all used, the FCC went to two-letter prefixes: KA5 and so on. I have no idea how far into the alphabet they are by now; I let my license lapse in 1967, when the FCC was charging a fee for renewal.

[ctchandler]

Jim,
I would have sworn the W meant Westinghouse, but I couldn't find that anywhere so I obviously have something confused. I did find this interesting thing, "Stations west of the Mississippi River that were licenced before the late January 1923 boundary shift, and were located in the slice of W territory that existed west of the Mississippi prior to the shift. (Originally about 170 stations, not including Minnesota and Louisiana. However, due to very high deletion rates plus later call changes, only eleven of these original calls survive: WEW, WHB, WKY, WOC, WOI, WBAP, WDAY, WJAG, WNAX, WOAI, and WTAW)". Now, it says "original calls survive", does that mean there are functioning radio stations still surviving? I have no idea and I don't plan to go look them up.
C. T.

[Jim Kyle]

Now that you've posted the list, I do think that WBAP might still be around. In the "golden age" of radio, WFAA in Dallas and WBAP in Fort Worth shared the same frequency assignment, so could not broadcast at the same time. They swapped out at regular intervals so that neither of them had a monopoly on prime time, and would ring a cowbell at changeover time then announce the change of stations. Post the link where you found that and I'll see if I can dig a bit deeper with it...

[ctchandler]

JIm,
You've got it.
C. T.

http://earlyradiohistory.us/kwtrivia.htm

Now that you've posted the list, I do think that WBAP might still be around. In the "golden age" of radio, WFAA in Dallas and WBAP in Fort Worth shared the same frequency assignment, so could not broadcast at the same time. They swapped out at regular intervals so that neither of them had a monopoly on prime time, and would ring a cowbell at changeover time then announce the change of stations. Post the link where you found that and I'll see if I can dig a bit deeper with it...

[MrZ]

Thunder, you post some very odd subjects on here, but this one takes the cake. Surprised at color movies from the 60's? Oh brother.

[Jim Kyle]

Absolutely fascinating site! It shows that I was wrong about WNAD being shut down; instead it became WWLS in 1981, when it went from being a part of OU to being a commercial operation, and still exists today.

[Thunder]

Thunder, you post some very odd subjects on here, but this one takes the cake. Surprised at color movies from the 60's? Oh brother.

Its what I do around here. Entertaining the males, females, and animals all around. :-)

[MadMonk]

Thunder, you post some very odd subjects on here, but this one takes the cake. Surprised at color movies from the 60's? Oh brother.

But look at all the conversation it sparked. Interesting stuff.

[Jim Kyle]

From what I understand, RCA was NBC's parent company at the beginning of color television and they made a decision not to sell their color equipment to any of their local affiliates until all the network O&O's (Owned & Operated) were switched over. WKY was the first of the local affiliates to receive color gear after the network owned stations were converted.

I just checked with Johnny Shannon, who began with WKY-TV right at the start and retired many years later as its chief photographer. He told me their first color camera had a serial number of 3, so they got it VERY early in the game. It's true that NBC was owned by RCA at the time, and was the first network to go to an all-color schedule (to increase the demand for RCA's color sets, naturally!).

[TaoMaas]

I just checked with Johnny Shannon, who began with WKY-TV right at the start and retired many years later as its chief photographer. He told me their first color camera had a serial number of 3, so they got it VERY early in the game. It's true that NBC was owned by RCA at the time, and was the first network to go to an all-color schedule (to increase the demand for RCA's color sets, naturally!).

I wonder if that's the camera that's on display at the history center right now. It's over by the Hee Haw exhibit.