Wikipedia:Naming conventions (broadcasting)/Call sign appendix

This page is an appendix of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (broadcasting) and provides specific information on call sign styling for countries where pages on radio and television stations are call sign-titled. For more information, see the conventions page.

Argentina

Mostly common name-titled

Call signs are assigned to most stations, but it is unclear whether they are assigned to certain new digital television services.

Television stations are titled at common name titles. For most stations, this is a title translated from "Canal X", such as Channel 3 (Rosario, Argentina). The Telefe owned-and-operated stations use their names, such as Telefe Rosario.

Many radio stations are common name-titled or list both, e.g. Cadena 94.9, LRA Radio Nacional, and LT24.

Australia

Mixed titling

Australian radio titles are a mix of common name and call sign. Almost all FM stations are common name titled, and so are a number of AM stations. Call signs are mostly used as FM titles when the station branding is indistinct (e.g. "88.9 FM" 2YOU).

Most television station articles tend to be titled by call sign, but many need disambiguation as they are all three letters in length.

Canada

Call sign titled

Canadian call signs are in the CB range (for CBC stations) and the CF, CH–CK range for almost all other stations. FM and television stations are suffixed -FM and -DT (analogue TV used -TV), except for CBC stations in the analogue era; boosters are suffixed by number. AM stations are not suffixed but may take silent disambiguators—parenthetical short disambiguators—where needed, such as CBU (AM).

Some stations that were once rebroadcasters of other stations but are now independent of their parent still have call signs indicating this, such as CITE-FM-1 or CHEX-DT-2.

Mexico

Call sign titled

Mexican call signs start with XE, for all AM stations and a few dozen legacy FM and TV outlets, and XH for all other FM and TV stations. All stations are suffixed:

• -AM for AM
• -FM for FM
• -TDT for digital TV
• -TV for analog TV (no longer used)
• -OC for shortwave (from onda corta)

There are more than two dozen call signs issued to two unrelated stations in Mexico, such as XHLZ-FM (Coahuila) and XHLZ-FM (Michoacán). These are disambiguated where both stations have an article.

In certain cases, a common name title may be advisable where, for legal reasons, a station switched concessions and was assigned a new call sign in the process or where sequential assignment led to adjacent letter call signs in the same area. The Federal Telecommunications Institute nearly exclusively assigns call signs by station type from a sequential list, typically with the middle two letters indicating station type and the last two being a semi-sequential assignment. For instance, XHCPBS-FM is a public concession (concesión pública), and XHSCAI-FM is a social community station (social comunitaria).

Philippines

Call sign titled

The Philippines has call signs that begin with DW, DX, DY, and DZ. DW and DZ are used for stations on Luzon, DX on Mindanao, and DY on Visayas. Stations are suffixed -AM, -FM, -TV, and -DTV. Translators have call signs consisting of a channel and two letters after the letter D, such as D-7-AB.

United States

Call sign titled

The United States uses a number of suffixes, though AM stations are never suffixed. Note that not all U.S. stations are suffixed; suffixes are only assigned by the FCC when the station specifically requests it (usually because another station already uses the unsuffixed call sign).

• -FM for FM
• -TV (or, less commonly, -DT) for TV
• Low-power:
  • -LD (or, less commonly and/or in analog, -LP) for low-power digital TV stations
  • -CD (or, in analog, -CA) for Class A low-power digital TV stations
  • -LP for low-power FM stations

Translators have numbers in their call sign, such as K22JA-D, K07AAF-D (note the -D suffix for digital TV translators), or K279AJ (three numbers for FM).

Note that some low-power stations will brand by suffixes used by full-power stations, e.g. "KWSS-FM" for KWSS-LP.

Countries that assign call signs but where all articles are common-name titled

• Brazil
• Japan
• Uruguay