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Radio Garden – Explore live radio by rotating the globe

radio.garden

31–40 of 128 posts

Re: Radio Garden – Explore live radio by rotating the globe

#31

Why do so many US stations have such cryptic abbreviated names? And why do so many start with W or K?

It was a naming convention created in the early 1900s, using the Mississippi River as a rough line of delineation. Local TV stations use a similar convention. https://www.rd.com/culture/radio-stations-k-w/

Oh wow so they don't even stand for anything? Must be hard to brand an abbreviation you get handed!

Re: Radio Garden – Explore live radio by rotating the globe

#32

Why do so many US stations have such cryptic abbreviated names? And why do so many start with W or K?

I believe K is for west of the Mississippi River and W is for the east.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_signs_in_North_America

In Canada they all start with C.

Re: Radio Garden – Explore live radio by rotating the globe

#34

Great site! But as I clicked on music radio stations across the US, they were almost all broadcasting commercials at the time. Which is one of the fundamental problems with the format.

Filter for public radio? In my opinion anything else isn’t worth listening anyways.

Re: Radio Garden – Explore live radio by rotating the globe

#35

It's crazy how similar pop music sounds from all over the world. The language differs, but the energy of the music is similar in a lot of different countries. I wonder if this is because everyone is using digital audio workstations like Ableton or Logic now. It used to be that different places had different instruments; and it would take years to become an expert. But now, the DAW is everybody's instrument.

musicians are the ultimate cross-pollinators .. someone, somewhere will inevitably get a creative buzz from listening to something solid from somwhere else.. its not a bad thing, entirely.. different strokes for different folks .. Think about "guitars", except over the centuries.. is it a technical copying that makes the music sound the same, since it is a stringed instrument, like those other ones ? hmm It certainly…

A wonderful video exploring this: Everything is a Remix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc

Re: Radio Garden – Explore live radio by rotating the globe

#36

Why do so many US stations have such cryptic abbreviated names? And why do so many start with W or K?

I believe K is for west of the Mississippi River and W is for the east. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_signs_in_North_America In Canada they all start with C.

Radio stations don't have call signs in my country, they just give themselves descriptive names of what they play like 'Classic FM'.

Re: Radio Garden – Explore live radio by rotating the globe

#37

Strange, I tuned into a random South Africa station and the guy immediately started talking about radio garden. Coincidence? Did not sound like an advert because he immediately trailed off to talking about Netflix and some ex marine sniper stuff.

Perhaps he'd been browsing hacker news.

Re: Radio Garden – Explore live radio by rotating the globe

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a naming convention created in the early 1900s, using the Mississippi River as a rough line of delineation. Local TV stations use a similar convention. https://www.rd.com/culture/radio-stations-k-w/

Oh wow so they don't even stand for anything? Must be hard to brand an abbreviation you get handed!

The three latter letters are usually meaningful, but only barely. For example, there’s WGBH, a Boston public broadcasting station that stands for Great Blue Hills, which are the hills that the broadcasting antenna is located on.
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