Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Radio Stations/Archive3

Question Regarding FM Translator Stations
I have been looking through the radio station templates for markets (ie. San Diego FM), and noticed that nobody is including broadcast FM translator stations. Should translator stations ONLY be listed on the article of the radio station? Should it NOT be included in the template that lists the FM stations for a particular market (ie. San Diego FM)? I would appreciate any help as there are quite a few radio stations that broadcast on translators not included - which prevents a complete list of radio stations from being disclosed in a given radio market but I don't want to add this information without permission and/or in an improper format. Transent 00:12, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project
Hi, I'm a member of the Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? Please post your suggestions here. Thanks a lot! Gflores Talk 17:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Past Stations
I'm thinking we should have some sort of criteria for whether a past station should have its own article, or should be mentioned in the history of the article on the current station. I have no doubt that legendary stations such as KMET and KNAC in Los Angeles should have their own articles. KNX-FM is on the borderline, I could see it having its own article, but I also see it part of the history of KCBS-FM. But does every Spanish station that has ever been on 93.5 FM (KMJR and KZAB) or 1540 AM (KSKQ, KXED, KXMG) need their own article? DHowell 22:35, 24 February 2006 (UTC) In looking for information, people will search out call letters first. In researching a story about Los Angeles Radio, I'll want to get info about KHJ, or WHK in Cleveland. In reseraching a particular station's history, I will look at the frequency. I stongly suggest master articles under frequencies and cities, with timeline links to articles by call letters. i.e. 92.5 FM - Cincinnati as a master article, then links to articles about WWEZ, WFFX, etc. As I have the time, I will create a couple of these for stations I have worked for, as an example. Because of call letter changes, etc. you will not be able to avoid seperate articles about each stations' history. For example, look at 440.com, which links stations, cities and people. People will look for call letters first. Also, I would allow links to articles with station names as titles (Q102, etc.) with the same links list as under Jack MarkElliott 08:35, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I am in favor of keeping the old stations around in most cases. They did exist and merited an entry so why remove them?  Does it really harm anything by doing so?  It also makes it easier to follow the history by keeping it all in different articles. The question would be in what cases do you not keep the old station article?  As to the spanish staions you listed above, would it hurt if those old articles were kept since this is not a paper encylopedia?  Vegaswikian 23:04, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Note that the current naming convention states, "Where a station has changed call signs, please put the station's entire history in its current call sign, as the old call signs may subsequently be reassigned to new stations." This practice is normally followed in Wikipedia, e.g. for info about WXRK New York, you need to look at the WFNY-FM article, as WXRK is now a station in Cleveland. There should be redirects and disambiguation links to direct people to the right place, of course. Exceptions to this naming convention are usually few and far between, KMET and KNAC being among the most notable of them. (The fact that no one has moved the KMET article and replaced it with an article about the 1 kW AM station in Banning seems to set a good precedent for having at least some exceptions to this convention). The stub articles I mentioned, which were all created by one person (Ronald20), seem to me to be less useful than a redirect to a full article tracing the history of the radio station that currently exists (or at least a more notable incarnation of a previous radio station) would be. I disagree that having separate articles makes it easier to follow the history—if I'm interested in the history of 1540 AM, I need to find at least four different articles (including KMPC which currently mentions nothing about what was on its current frequency before)—none of which are linked in any obvious way—and there is no mention of KPOL, KZLA (AM), or KCTD, and no obvious place to put information I might have about them (other than their giving them their own articles, which would be exacerbating the problem). For the history of 93.5 FM, I need to see KDAY as well as the two Spanish station articles, again with no links between them, and nowhere to be found is any mention of the station that occupied that frequency the longest, KFOX. The existence of these articles also makes it unclear what to do when a new radio station gets the call letters of one of these former stations, e.g. KMJR in Portland, Texas, or KXMG in Portland, Oregon. DHowell 01:36, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Low-power licensed stations
I think we've established that low-power unlicensed (Part 15) microstations aren't generally encyclopedic, but what about low-power licensed stations? I've noticed that Michigan Technological University's WMTU has been speedily deleted twice for being non-notable, but it does indeed have an FCC license:. What do you think, should this be undeleted? In particular, this station has a construction permit to increase its power from 100 watts to 4.4 kW. DHowell 00:09, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
 * That's not even a low-power station, as 47 CFR defines it; that's a full class-A. (If it were a real low-power station, i.e., an LPFM, it would be WMTU-LP.)  I'm not sure that's enough to make it notable, though&mdash;there are 12,000 licensed stations, and not all of them are encyclopedia material.  I definitely don't think it's appropriate to speedy them without asking a subject-matter expert (e.g., the participants of this WikiProject).  121a0012 01:54, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
 * The last speedy was for a club. I don't consider that a speedy deletion criteria for a licensed station.  Also, the call sign seems to be WMTU-FM if I'm reading the FCC query results correctly.  Will likely undelete and put something in the talk about this not being a club. Vegaswikian 03:58, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
 * My opinion on LPFM's is that if they primarily broadcast satellite-fed programming (e.g. religious radio networks), there isn't much to put on the article. Those with local based programming (or local and satellite mixed) could have an article.--grejlen - talk 05:51, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we need to use the call letters becuase that will be the most likely search term searched. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rick1031 (talk • contribs).

Point of View Material
As the program manager for a group of stations in Northern Michigan, I have noticed that some listeners and disgruntled employees have been using Wikipedia to post slanderous, misleading and other information, then referring to it on message boards and blogs. (Just check the history of Wfcx for an example. I felt it necessary to make that change immediately.)   It would somewhat self serving for me to remove and edit such information, as it would look like I was trying to manipulate what was said about my stations. I would be happy to start patrolling another section of stations to edit that material if someone could do so for my stations and area. We could monitor and trade info about these posts and keep them factual. Please send me an email if you are interested. MarkElliott 14:53, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Template categorization
As part of ongoing template categorization efforts, Cat:Radio templates and Cat:Radio navigational boxes have been created. 120 templates have been sorted into the latter so far, which just goes to show that people have been quite busy. The hope is that this will assist in template standarization and tracking across Wikipedia; you can help by adding any other templates you know of, as well as voicing your opinion on the current categorization hierarchy. –Unint 03:29, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Possible Expansion to Cover Radio Programs?
I note that there is right now no wikipedia project to deal with radio programs. Given the recent proliferation of podcasting shows, as well as the comparative dearth of information on a lot of the programs run by the various stations this project deals with, I think that it might make sense if the scope of this project were to be include to include the programs as well. Thoughts? Badbilltucker 13:36, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Linking to AM and FM
For those of you working on radio station pages: Please take care when making links to AM and FM. Note that AM is a disambiguation page, and FM redirects to Frequency modulation, which may not be the ideal link. I've been working to disambiguate AM, and on radio station pages, I've generally been making the link to amplitude modulation to remain consistant with FM. If there's a better place, let me know. In general, should your project attempt to define consistant links for AM and FM? –RHolton ≡ – 20:05, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not part of this project, but I've made a request for an article in your todo list, so I thought I'd try to help. When you want to link "FM" or "AM" to their propoer contexts, you can use FM radio or AM radio templates I've just made. They output: "FM" and "AM". Shorten the name if you want, but the template should make the linking easier. --Chris Griswold 02:16, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Nevermind the article request; found Jack FM and Bob FM. --Chris Griswold 02:19, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Potential merger of Jazz FM and Smooth FM articles, which goes against guidance on project page
I have been debating with someone else who suggests the 102.2 Jazz FM article should be merged into the 102.2 Smooth FM article. According to guidance on the project page, it says the following, to quote:


 * If the renamed station adopts a new format (in effect, a new station using the existing frequency)
 * Note: These guidelines could also be used in the event of a station change due to regulatory intervention (e.g. Devonair losing their frequencies to Gemini FM).
 * Create a new article for the new station, but include a brief reference to the old station. The first air date field of the article's infobox should refer to the launch date of the new station.
 * The article for the old station should be updated to indicate that the station in that form is now defunct. A good way to indicate this would be to append (defunct) to the station's name in its infobox.
 * Example: 102.2 Jazz FM becomes 102.2 Smooth FM.

The problem is that someone has already merged the 100.4 Jazz FM into the Smooth FM 100.4 article and has pretty much deleted all the information I created for the 100.4 Jazz FM article, so I'm worried someone else will do the same with the 102.2 Jazz FM article as well. What do other project members suggest? Sonic 08:07, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Merging station articles, the original article should remain, and attached to the new station. i.e. In Detroit, WWWW (W-4) became Alice, then The Drive and now The Fox. Each of those iterations should be a seperate article, with all links together. They are truly like seperate people, each with it's own lifespan and timeline. The original article should remain, an obituary for that iteration of that frequency. MarkElliott 17:11, 8 June 2006 (UTC)


 * That's not a particularly good example, since we don't use slogans for U.S. station articles. WWWW became WWWW-FM, then WLLC, then WDTW, and now WDTW-FM: these are all the same station and described in the same article.  Meanwhile, at the same time WWWW-FM became WLLC, WIQB-FM became WWWW; these are different stations, despite having had the same callsign.
 * My personal feeling (which appears to be something different from the consensus of UK station article editors) would be to follow the same rule: if it's the same license, and just a new name, then it should be in the same article, thus leaving the old name available for when another station adopts the same name. If it's a different license, then there should be separate articles.  But ultimately it's up to the UK crew to decide what makes the most sense for their situation.  121a0012 16:04, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Even that approach can be problematic. Could it be that the solution would be a simple rewording? Something like 'Generally, a name change for a station should not result in a new article. Preference should be given to keeping a single article and local editors should determine if starting a new article deals with the change in a clearer manner.'  Could something like this work?
 * There's always been a need for editorial discretion, and having a general rule doesn't change that. 121a0012 20:20, 11 June 2006 (UTC)


 * What should I do regarding the 100.4 Jazz FM article being merged into the Smooth FM 100.4 (we'll less of a merger, more of a deletion of all my work), because the same thing applies in that situation? Sonic 18:38, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Merges should not lose information. Personally, if other editors believe that information does not have a place in the new article, then it would seem reasonable to recreate the old article useing the deleted material.  I suspect this article would be more then a stub.  You might want to wait a day or two to see if anyone here sees a problem with this approach.  Vegaswikian 22:54, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

A question about radio templates.
Hi WikiProject Radio, I've been working on the entry for KPSU and wanted to insert KPSU into this template which I find at the bottom of many Portland, Oregon radio entries: Portland(OR) FM Portland(OR) AM Is that possible? Do you know where those templates are hiding?Katsam 06:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, since you asked I'll give the easiest way. Edit the article and then scroll down the page and at the bottom you will see the template listed. Then select and you will have a page that you can edit from.  I also modified your question to not include the text of the template and its categories on this page.  Vegaswikian 06:24, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
 * They are at: Template:Portland(OR) FM and Template:Portland(OR) FM. Oh, and I've added them in for you. Cheers! --Ckatz 06:31, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Key articles for Wikipedia 1.0
Hello! We at the Work via WikiProjects team previously contacted you to identify the quality articles in your WikiProject, and now we need a few more favors. We would like you to identify the "key articles" from your project that should be included in a small CD release due to their importance, regardless of quality. We will use that information to assess which articles should be nominated for Version 0.5 and later versions. Hopefully it will also help you identify which articles are the most important for the project to work on. As well, please keep updating your Arts WikiProject article table for articles of high quality. If you are interested in developing a worklist such as this one for your WikiProject, or having a bot generate a worklist automatically for you, please contact us. Thanks! Walkerma 04:35, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Notability question
Is Radio Free Gilbertsville, which claims an ERP of 400 milliwatts, a station that merits an article per Wikipedia inclusion guidelines? Bearcat 23:25, 13 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, it's clearly not an LPFM as that term is understood; LPFMs have ERPs in the range of 10 W to 100 W. So it's probably an unlicensed Part 15 operation, in which case the presumption should certainly be against it, lest every iPod FM adapter be included.  Does it have actual, measurable listenership?  Does it get mentioned in the local press?  What sort of programming does it have?  Does it have a Web site?  (It fails the Google test.)  As it stands, the article bears all the hallmarks of a vanity article. 121a0012 01:44, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * There is a website; it's present as an external link on the article, but appears to be little more than a subpage of the region's arts committee (who also seem to be the operators of the station). It claims to reach "the village and some outlying areas not blocked by the hills", and also claims the unofficial callsign WRFG (which is actually assigned to a real station in Atlanta.) From the site, it looks like arts and community programming on weekends only; there are no claims as to actual measured listenership. Bearcat 21:49, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Radio AFD
See Articles for deletion/KRES. Duly licensed station; legitimate (though stubbish) article. Bearcat 02:38, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Category:St. John's
I just cleaned up this above Category and added the missing subcategories and put the appropriate "articles" which shouldn't have been there, into their appropriate categories and left the section with only the Categories showing. I still have to go to the individual subcategories and make sure they have all of their appropriate Category links as well. I also added missing information related to St. John's, in the article on St. John's. Most were radio stations that were relocated to NFLD radio categories and the radio category was placed into this major Category. WayneRay 21:34, 23 July 2006 (UTC)WayneRay
 * It is entirely normal and correct for media outlets in a city to be filed in that city's own dedicated category, if there is one; the alternative would be to create a separate Category:St. John's media category. Filing Category:Radio stations in Newfoundland and Labrador as a subcategory of Category:St. John's is flat out wrong, because that category also includes a lot of stations that aren't in St. John's. You took something which was completely correct and made it all wrong. Bearcat 20:27, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Radio stations & categories
The page says: A radio station should never be filed directly in Category:Radio stations, except in the rare circumstance where it would be impossible to create a more appropriate subcategory.
 * Yeah?; that sounds severe. This needs an explanation --Otherwise, we should make a lot of sub-categories for stations and station formats.  Formats are the defining reason why people listen to stations.
 * It makes sense, though. There is no good reason to create a category which would be so large as to be ultimately useless. If such were done, I have no doubt that the banner currently on Category:People from Texas, would be put there too.  Regarding the suggestion for subcategory ideas, I would think that probably the best and most useful subcategories would be Stations by state, Stations by city, and, yes, program-format categories.  The one major question there is coming up with sufficiently transparent names for formats such that any comparatively uninformed user would recognize them immediately.  I would think country, gospel, jazz, rock, R&B, religious, easy listening, news, news/talk, and so on would be generally recognized, but such as "'hot' adult contemporary country" might be a bit too specific.  However, I can certainly agree to having categories or sub-categories which are fairly immediately obvious created.  Badbilltucker 13:26, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * There already are a lot of subcategories for radio stations by location and/or format. Bearcat 19:14, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Using the assessments
I believe it would be useful if we, when possible added the assessments that the editorial team is using to identify articles to be published (see first comment on this talk page). If we categorize our articles I could send them a list of the most organized and useful articles that have been built through this project, as they asked for them earlier. What do you all think?

PeteShanosky 15:49, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


 * As someone who was going to ask for the same list myself, I think it's a great idea. It would also, at least potentially, be useful for this project itself to have a list of its most important and best articles, particularly the most important articles.  Most radio stations will also fall under the purview of the wikiproject dealing with the state's transmission base/hometown, and several of the more important articles might at least potentially also be important enough to get some attention and input from the project dealing with that state/town/area too.  I have created a new address at User:Badbilltucker2 where I hope to get lists from all the WikiProjects on the articles they consider their best and the most important to their projects, and am going to try to at least lay the groundwork for inter-project collaborations once I get a number of the lists in.  Badbilltucker 16:39, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Templates
There's some kind of technical snafu affecting the market and state templates on WOLT-FM and WOLI-FM, causing the second template to embed in the first one. Can somebody who knows more than I do about how to code and fix templates look at these two and fix whatever's broken? Thanks. Bearcat 19:14, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Replace AM/FM query?
Even though I'm not part of this project, I stumbled across this site, it is TV/FM/AM query all in one, and compiles data directly from the FCC database. It is a lot better than the FCC database, showing former callsigns, a contour map, and other vital info all on the same page....is there any way we can replace the TV/AM/FM query with this? CFIF ☎ 00:23, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
 * If it were going to be replaced, I'd probably go with the somewhat more official CDBS query, although that unfortunately has two different entry points depending on whether you want current information or applications. To do it right would involve using the Facility ID Number instead of the callsign.  121a0012 04:51, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Two older articles
Hi! I did a couple of articles some months ago that you may find of interest. They are KPLM-FM and KWXY-FM. Thanks!! - Lucky 6.9 04:29, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Frequency disambiguation
Is there any merit to a series of disambiguation lists at 89.1, 89.3, etc to show current and former stations at specific frequencies? Might provide a place to stick some of the smaller, non-encyclopedic-as-a-full-article data, and would link for people like me who want to know what their presets for KC will run into when they get to Denver. -- nae'blis 21:46, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

KISS/Portland Maine
Hello. I heard about a kiss station in portlan maine, and was wondering if anyone could tell me the call number. if i were to know, i would start an article for it. thanks! Jmclark911 17:44, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

doesn't exist...theres a Kiss in Bangor Maine and there was a Kiss in Lewiston/Auburn Maine Mr mark taylor 20:08, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Potential legal issue with UK Radio station schedules
Under section 176 of the Broadcasting Act 1990, TV schedules and programme information require royalties to be paid to the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 (which is collected by Broadcasting Dataservices (BDS)). Publishing a schedule without paying a royality is a criminal offence. I believe this could also apply to BBC Radio services and maybe commercial network services too.


 * Broadcasting Dataservices (BDS) network radio page
 * Broadcasting Act 1990 - section 176

I have two questions:


 * 1) Does it affect BBC Network radio stations, and commericial network radio stations?
 * 2) What does this mean for editors who put schedules for UK radio stations in Wikipedia, regardless of its unencyclopedic status (section 1.7.3. of WP:WWIN). Would the fact that the servers are based in the United States make a difference if someone posted a schedule? --tgheretford (talk) 16:57, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Project Directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:
 * User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
 * User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
 * User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:56, 23 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now put the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 00:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

KTAR
I gave this thing an infobox and a better history section. TTV (MyTV|PolygonZ|Green Valley) 00:52, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

New proposal for WikiProject Radio
On Wikipedia:WikiProject/List of proposed projects, there is a new project proposed that would deal with those aspects of radio not covered by this existing projects. The temporary project page is also available at User:Badbilltucker/WikiProject Radio. Any parties interested in either project are encourage to indicate their interest on either or both pages. Thanks. Badbilltucker 15:27, 13 November 2006 (UTC)


 * It would be nice to have a Wikiproject Radio, since there is no generic wikiproject for it. The radio station project could become either a descendent wikiproject or possibly be merged into the main. Please show your interest on the proposal. --PhantomS 03:40, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia
Beginning cross-post.
 * See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★ MESSED  ROCKER ★  23:22, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

''End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.''

KTAR...again
More Phoenix radio news involving the KTAR group/written by Shin'ou's TTV (Futaba|Masago|Kotobuki) 02:45, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

When the new year rolls around, the two KTAR stations are splitting. Right now, they have one article. It looks like this will happen:

First, AM information moves to a new article, KTAR-AM, while FM information goes to KTAR-FM, another new article. KTAR becomes a dab, KMVP-AM becomes a temporary redirect to KTAR-AM with its own section for KMVP-specific stuff, and when those two split, the KMVP stuff goes back to KMVP-AM (if it has new calls, the article under those). Well, the problem is that 620 will have been in a simulcast mode for a while when the KTAR and KMVP AMs split from their initial sports simulcast, and that the AM article will need to detail these simulcasts. I have an Arizona Almanac compiled by KTAR that I could probably scan and crop to show the 620 news period logo to show that.

Ugh...I'll do everything slowly on December 31st possibly or morning on January 1st if not. Currently, KTAR-AM and -FM would be good as redirects; I will make them. 620 KTAR, which DOES redirect to KTAR, is going to RfD then.

College radio stations
The issue has been raised that the international generic parent category Category:College radio stations should be renamed to a more inclusive term which recognizes that different countries have different names for this radio format. The country-specific categories should certainly maintain their existing names; the question is what's the most appropriate name for the international umbrella category. I've initiated a discussion at Category talk:College radio stations to discuss this. Please come participate. Thanks. Bearcat 19:49, 30 November 2006 (UTC)