Wikipedia:WikiProject Radio Stations

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Some Wikipedians have formed a project to better organize information in articles related to radio stations. This page and its subpages contain their suggestions; it is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians. If you would like to help, please inquire on the talk page and see the to-do list there.

Contents

[edit] Title

WikiProject on radio stations

[edit] Scope

In particular, this WikiProject aims to coordinate activities of creating and maintaining articles about radio stations, although technology and content contributions are also appreciated along with articles related to the people who produce such material.

[edit] Parentage

Established parent as WikiProject Radio.

[edit] Descendant WikiProjects

No descendant WikiProjects have been defined.

[edit] Similar WikiProjects

No similar WikiProjects have been named.

[edit] Related WikiProjects

The following WikiProject(s) are related to WikiProject Radio Stations:

[edit] Participants

If you wish to participate in this WikiProject, add your username to the list below:

[edit] Structure

[edit] Article title

Following Wikipedia standard, article titles should relate to the best-known name in most cases. However, this is somewhat complicated by the fact that there is rampant duplication of the names/nicknames used for broadcast stations. For example, there are several stations named "93X". In these instances, a disambiguation page should be created.

[edit] Stations without call signs

Articles for stations in countries which do not use government-issued call signs, including much of Europe and Asia, should generally use the station name as used on-air. In the event of a station changing name or format:

If the renamed station retains the existing format
Move the article to the station's new name, keeping the old name as a redirect. Update the article to refer to any changes to the station's name/ownership.
Example: The Bear 102 becomes Touch FM (Stratford-upon-Avon).
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. Devon Air 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.
If a station retains its existing name, but radically changes its format
Create a new section within the existing article about the format change.

Redirects should be created for commonly-used station nicknames.

[edit] Stations with call signs

It is common in many countries, including the United States, Canada, and Australia, for government-issued call signs to be used, and these are ordinarily the best names to use in those countries. There are some odd examples, though, such as Drive 105 in Minnesota, which has three transmitters, with no "main" one normally announced (however, some stations heading large networks such as KCRW in California and KFAN in MN, North Dakota, and Wisconsin are known by a primary call sign).

There is also the problem of duplication of call signs. KCBS can refer to an AM, FM, or TV station, and the three are not all owned by the same organization. If there are multiple stations with the same call (or other organizations commonly use the same abbreviation), recommended practice at this time is to use these conventions (in the United States, at least):

Some editors do not like this practice, but it was initially determined to be the best course of action because the Federal Communications Commission does not officially recognize stations with "-AM" suffixes (they were the original type of station in the U.S., and FM/TV came later). It is fairly easy to determine the official call sign for an American station by using the FCC query pages:

If there is only one station with a particular name, redirects should be created. For example, WNEP-TV is the official name for a channel in Pennsylvania, but since there aren't any AM or FM stations of the same name, it is the only one. WNEP should be created as a redirect pointing to WNEP-TV. Note that if a station changes callsigns, its full history should be listed in its present or last callsign whenever possible, as its old callsign may subsequently be reassigned to a new station. For example, CJOR in Osoyoos, British Columbia is not the same station as the former CJOR in Vancouver. Accordingly, references to the Vancouver station must link to CKBD (AM), using pipe text to replace the call sign with CJOR; they must not link to CJOR (AM).

In some rare situations, however, it may be unclear whether a new call sign should be considered a successor to an old one, or an entirely new station. If there is any doubt, solicit opinions on this project's talk page.

Please note that broadcast stations may also need to be disambiguated from acronyms for non-broadcast organizations. See, for example, WFDF, WCRI and CIPA.

Another good place for information and coverage maps is radio-locator.com but use it sparingly unless you are a pay user—otherwise you get cut off each day after a certain number of pageviews. (Note, however, that radio-locator may not be a fully reliable source for station information outside of the United States. For example, as of 2005 both radio-locator and the FCC's radio database still refer to Leamington, Ontario's CHYR as an AM station even though the station moved to FM in 1993.)

For Canadian radio stations, the Canadian Communications Database is a good resource. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission does not maintain a database of broadcast data, but searching the CRTC website for a station's callsign will bring up CRTC decisions relating to that station. An important CRTC decision, such as the station's original license, an ownership change or another decision important enough to be noted in the article (e.g. the CHOI license revocation) may be an appropriate external link. (The Industry Canada database at this link may also be of some assistance, but is not fully equivalent to the FCC site in terms of the information it offers or the database structure.)

There are a few unusual cases for American stations where a suffix is something relatively unusual, such as "-CA" (low-power TV), or "-LP" (low-power FM). In these cases, a redirect for the expected name should probably be created to point to the article page (ie, having "WXYZ-TV" point to "WXYZ-CA"). See the next section for more. To make things even more confusing, "-CA" stations can duplicate call signs of other stations. For instance WYBE-CA is a small station in North Carolina while WYBE (a TV station without the "-TV") serves Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

[edit] Redirects/disambiguation articles

To avoid the creation of duplicate articles, it is good to create a few redirects and/or disambiguation articles as soon as a new article is created. For example, the article KSTP—a call sign used by three different stations—is used as a disambiguation page to point to:

In addition, the KSTP-AM article was created to redirect to KSTP (AM). If you wish, you can create more redirects (such as KSTP-CA), though this is generally not necessary.

For more information on the use of redirects and disambiguation articles on Wikipedia, read the following:

[edit] Article format

Here is one suggestion on how to begin:

KLMN (102.3 FM, "The Illuminator") is a radio station broadcasting an oldies format. Licensed to the suburb of Smallville, USA, it serves the Metropolis metropolitan area. It first began broadcasting in 1933 under the call sign KRYP. The station is currently owned by Lexcorp.

It is probably best to link "FM" to FM broadcasting and "AM" to AM broadcasting, instead of "FM" to frequency modulation and "AM" to amplitude modulation since they are more generic terms.

Where applicable a call sign history is appreciated, as complete as is practically possible. For stations in the United States, the FCC query pages provide links that can show call sign history (at least back to about 1980). The templates {{AMQ}} and {{FMQ}} are available, which will add to an article an automatically-generated link to the relevant entry in the FCC's online database.

If you are only able to get a few details for a particular station, please add {{radio-station-stub}} at the bottom of the page. Country-specific categories, such as {{US-radio-station-stub}}, {{Canada-radio-station-stub}} or {{Mexico-bcast-stub}}, should be used when possible.

[edit] Categories

There are many categories that can be used. Many states and provinces now have their own categories for radio. Normally, American and Canadian stations should use at least these categories (such as Category:Radio stations in Washington). If a state or province subcategory exists or can be created, then please do not file a station in both the state/province and country categories; this is not consistent with Wikipedia policy on the use of categories. Instead, the station should be filed only in the state or province category; the category is then filed in the country category.

Similarly, if a distinct category exists for radio stations in a particular city or metropolitan market, file the station only in the city category, and file the city category as a subcategory of the state or province. See Categories, lists and series boxes for more information.

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.

Note
The U.S. state of Georgia has peculiar category names to avoid conflict with the country: Category:Radio stations in Georgia (U.S. state).

Ownership categories are also useful, if they exist:

Categories by country:

[edit] Hierarchy definition

No classification of this project has been defined.

[edit] Templates

[edit] Infobox

This infobox should be used on all radio station articles. Usage instructions are available on the template page.

[edit] Stub templates

[edit] Talk page template

WikiProject Radio Stations This article is part of WikiProject Radio Stations, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to Radio stations. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.

The tag {{RadioStationsProject}} should be added to the top of the talk page of all articles maintained by this WikiProject.

  • For categories, use: {{{RadioStationsProject|category}}}
  • For templates, use: {{{RadioStationsProject|template}}}

[edit] Other templates

These two templates, used in the external links section of American radio stations (i.e., those in the United States), link the reader to the FCC database for the station which is the subject of the article. Information on how to use these templates can be found by following the above links.

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