[BC] Call letter curiosity

[Scott Fybush]

> In discussing KYA in SanFran, someone wondered why they changed calls to
> KDBQ in 1960 and reverted to KYA 2 weeks later.
>
> Someone suggested a wild speculation: KYA was co-owned with KCBQ in San
> Diego ...  and KYA's top 40 competitor, KEWB, was part of a KDWB KEWB KFWB
> ownership package (Crowell Collier).  They asked if, perhaps, Bartell, the
> owner of KYA and KCBQ, decided to make all their call letters fit a
> pattern, like Crowell Collier did - but changed their mind 2 weeks later?
>
> Does anyone know?

Interesting! No, I don't, and someone has already pointed out that
cross-bay competitor KRE reclaimed its calls TWICE, after switching to
KPAT in the sixties (to parallel sister beautiful-music station WPAT in
NYC) and again for a while in the late 80s.

WWJ-TV doesn't count, because the 3-letter base call never disappeared
from the market, having been in continuous use on AM since the twenties.

But there's also KHJ in LA, which got the calls back on AM a few years
back; KUT in Austin, which was abandoned on AM and then resurrected many
years later as a new noncomm FM from the University of Texas (hi, Dana!);
and WJZ, where the calls disappeared in NYC in '53 and were revived by
their original owner, Westinghouse, four years later on TV in Baltimore.

Where's Thomas White when we need him?

s