Hacker News Reader

Link updated, thanks!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_identification#United_...

  The United States' Federal Communications Commission (FCC) enforces specific requirements for identification that must be followed by all terrestrial radio and television stations. Stations must, when they sign on, sign off, and as close to the top of each hour as feasibly possible (such as within a "natural break" in programming, like a commercial break), present a visual (television) or aural (radio) station identification that contains, at minimum, the station's callsign, followed by its designated city of license. As a courtesy, top-of-hour identifications may also contain additional information, such as frequencies and a declaration of the station's ownership.[6] Only the name of the licensee, the station's frequency or channel number as stated on its license, and/or network affiliations, may be inserted between the call letters and station location.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign-on_and_sign-off#Sign-on/s...

  Technical information is provided. This can include station identification (call sign and city of license), transmitter power, frequency or channel number, translators used, transmitter locations, list of broadcast engineers, and/or studio/transmitter links (STL).

In my experience, the 1980s were a time when some TV stations would still sign off for a few hours, perhaps only on Sunday night. It is unusual today in the United States, for commercial radio or TV stations to sign off and sign on. When stations did sign off/on, I did hear some of them broadcasting an extended Station ID. A man's voice would call out those details listed. They would mention what mountain peak their main transmitter was on, and the wattage of "peak effective radiated power". Since I lived near the Mexican border, there were stations with Mexican licenses who broadcast in English programming, except for the Mexican National Hour. "Border Blasters", as they were called.

I'm aware of station identification requirements. It's possible that there were top-of-the-hour announcements I didn't hear or don't remember.

What I distinctly recall was that it was possible to get through a full weather or traffic report without the region being identified.

These days, a frequent gripe is that local-media websites (radio and television) fail to specify the state. Where a call-sign is available, I'm obliged to look that up on Wikipedia to figure out what location the story concerns. Place names are often given only as small town or county names, neither of which typically have national recognition, and many of which repeat from state to state.

It's actually funny you mentioned the lack of indicating call sign or operating location. I saw something similar done on purpose.

I worked at WCCO in Minneapolis briefly a few years ago. Right around that time, CBS corporate was attempting to standardize all their stations and associated websites. In their mind, that meant making everything "CBS News [Location]" and stripping just about everything else from the public marketing.

WCCO, KPIX in Los Angeles, and a few other stations battled back about this because the local name recognition of the call sign was stronger than CBS would be by itself.

So now, when you bop around the "Local News" section of the CBS Website, some cities have logos with the call letters, and some do not.

In short, when you see a station that that's difficult to identify, try finding out who owns it. Very often the ownership is to blame for one reason or another.

We also have 5?