Broadcast call signs

While broadcast radio stations will often brand themselves with plain-text names, identities such as "cool FM", "rock 105" or "the ABC network" are not globally unique.

Excluding those used in amateur radio, call signs are traditionally only used in the Americas and few countries such as Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan.

Four stations licensed to St. John's by the Dominion of Newfoundland government (VOWR, VOAR-FM, VOCM, and VOCM-FM) retain their original VO calls.

[1] Low-power broadcast translator stations begin with VF for FM and CH for TV, followed by four numerals assigned sequentially.

In the United States, the first letter generally is K for stations west of the Mississippi River (including Alaska, America Samoa, Guam, Hawaii, and Northern Mariana Islands) and W for those east of the Mississippi River (including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands).

Co-owned stations were also allowed to adopt their original short AM callsign like WGN-TV and KSL-TV, even after new ones were prohibited.

Another exception to this is that NIST time-broadcasting stations have a three- or four-letter callsign beginning with WWV.

Examples: El Salvador uses YS, YX and HU call signs depending on geographical area.

[4] In South America call signs have been a traditional way of identifying radio and TV stations.

Examples: In Brazil, radio and TV stations are identified by a ZY, a third letter and three numbers.

TV call signs follow a similar pattern to those for FM stations, but begin with the XR prefix.

Examples: In Colombia, the radio stations or television channels are identified by HJ and/or HK with two additional letters.

Callbooks were originally bound books that resembled a telephone directory and contains the name and addressees of licensed radio stations in a given jurisdiction (country).

Callbooks have evolved to include on-line databases that are accessible via the Internet to instantly obtain the address of another amateur radio operator and their QSL Managers.