Richard de Give wrote:
> Used to drive me crazy when I was editing news copy, and I'd alway
> change it from the station's "brand name" to the station's call letters
> and dial position. The station wants to be called by something else,
> they can buy an ad.
From the radio side of this...
There are a few stations that do not actually USE their legal FCC calls
except whispered briefly at the top of the hour. Insisting on using only
call letters may actually confuse readers who are already listeners to
the radio station...though the frequency is obvious enough.
Still - with no offense to Rich at all - newspapers as a rule screw up
the call letters and frequency of radio stations on a regular basis. So
there's no guarantee that the newspaper story will have that information
accurately!
A decent compromise would be using something like WXXX 590 AM ("X590")
once on first reference, then the legal call letters and/or frequency
after that.
As much as I understand the newspaper's reticence to give free publicity
to a slogan or alternate name, it makes little sense to ignore an
established on-air name for the station - if the public only knows it by
that name unless they pay attention to a quickly whispered legal ID once
an hour.
You don't have to put "X590, Anytown's Oldies Leader" in the copy. :D
(And I'm a BIG fan of legal IDs - a friend of mine runs a website solely
devoted to recordings of legal IDs!)
Of course, I also now work for a radio cluster where the main news
station is known by...its legal call letters and frequency, with no
other alternate name.
And yes, it bugged me when the media columnist for the Sacramento paper
insisted on calling the market's ABC-TV affiliate "News10" on each
reference. That's going TOO far, particularly when the "KXTV" calls are
certainly just as well known as the channel number.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"World News Now Discussion List" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/wnndl?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
