TV and radio stations only have to identify themselves by their formal call letters and city of license at the top of each hour. Otherwise, they can call themselves anything they want. And do so for various reasons.
On radio, identifying a station by location on the dial is a function of digital readouts on radios.
"Call letters are irrelevant," said Bill Hurwitz, vice president and general manager of Milwaukee Radio Alliance. "We're all digital properties now."
Milwaukee Radio Alliance owns WLDB-FM (93.3), WLUM-FM (102.1) and WMCS-AM (1290).
"And we have literally spent hundreds of thousands of dollars branding" WLUM as FM102.1, Hurwitz said.
WITI used to be TV6 but became Fox6 when it became affiliated with the Fox network, "one of the most well-known brands in America," said Chuck Steinmetz, WITI president and general manager.
"You take your brand seriously and . . . you don't change it often because it is how you are perceived and recognized," he said.
And such brand names give viewers filling out ratings diaries a quick shorthand way of remembering which station they watched, he said.
Steve Wexler, vice president of radio and TV operations for Journal Broadcast Group, called such nicknames "Marketing 101."
Journal Broadcast Group operates WTMJ-TV (Channel 4), which calls itself Today's TMJ4. Using the formal call letters, he said, would be like the Journal Sentinel calling itself the morning paper, or Coca-Cola a caffeinated cola tasting beverage.
"Any good brand manager," Wexler said, "prefers the product be called what it's marketed as."
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