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Hardest to pronounce call-letter combos

firepoint525

firepoint525

Walk of Fame Participant
Not going to nominate any stations for which I previously worked, because it seemed like for me, the hardest part was making sure that the "M" did not sound like "N" whenever I said the call-letters too fast.

I am sure that there are/were some call-letter combos out there that were hard, if not almost impossible to pronounce correctly, especially if said too fast. I am guessing that this is where station nicknames originated, instead of using actual call letters at every opportunity.

But anyway, let's see what the rest of you have got. I am sure that you could top anything that I could come up with!
 
OK, I'll throw out the first nomination: WGEE (W-gee-eee-eee). It should be called "wedgie," though it ain't...
 
Pretty much any W_W_ call ... specifically I'm thinking of WLWI which used to be in Indianapolis and at my last check was in Alabama. Hard not to stumble on the enunciation of the multiple double-yous
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
Pretty much any W_W_ call ... specifically I'm thinking of WLWI which used to be in Indianapolis and at my last check was in Alabama. Hard not to stumble on the enunciation of the multiple double-yous
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You reminded me of WWWW in Ann Arbor, MI. I am guessing that it was this station from which an announcer introduced Bob Seger at the Live Bullet concerts. I cannot even check my own record because the gatefold cover is stuck together as a result of the 2010 floods here.

http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/finder?call=wwww&x=15&y=5&sr=Y&s=C

The four Ws together sort of resemble a sawblade, which reminds me, I have got to cut down a tree in my backyard this fall!
 
JeffM said:
OK, I'll throw out the first nomination: WGEE (W-gee-eee-eee). It should be called "wedgie," though it ain't...
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A news story about the NAIA once gave me fits! Vowels, when strung together, can be extremely tough to pronounce.

Going back to my station above, it was WCMT, but I (sort of) referred to it on-air as "WC elm T" (like an elm tree) because if I said it too fast, "WC um T" sounded like "WCNT."
 
A few I can think of:

WUWF - Pensacola, Florida.

WWUN ('60s-'70s) - Jackson, Mississippi. Nickname was "W-One" -- somewhere on a short aircheck I have, there is a quick shotgun jingle of those calls. It's a testament to how good and tight those jingle vocalists were, although I imagine TM must've charged extra for those cuts! ;-)
 
First station I worked at out of high school in 1977 was W-W-C-B in Corry, PA. I knew to say "double-u, double-u see bee" but some on the air said "dub-a-u, dub-a-u.
 
rwells2265 said:
WWUN ('60s-'70s) - Jackson, Mississippi. Nickname was "W-One" -- somewhere on a short aircheck I have, there is a quick shotgun jingle of those calls. It's a testament to how good and tight those jingle vocalists were, although I imagine TM must've charged extra for those cuts! ;-)
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The top 40 station in the town where I grew up was KF-99, actual call letters WWKF. They gave their legal ID as "WWKF, Fulton, Union City." Yes, the jingle singers had to sing all that, and make it fit! Later, sister station KQ-105 out of Paris, TN, was added as a simulcasting station. Their legal ID is "WAKQ, Paris." Much easier for those jingle singers, I would think. So at the top of every hour, you have:

"WWKF, Fulton, Union City"

and

"WAKQ, Paris."

I would imagine that that second legal ID was MUCH easier on the jingle singers than that first one was!
 
Worse yet, dub-yuh for double yoo. Here are a couple of possibly ill-advised calls, but since they're over 90 years old, they aren't going away, and they shouldn't. If you slow down and be careful, they're perfectly fine. WOI, Ames, Iowa. Treat each letter like its own word, and you're fine. Double-yoo. Oh. Eye. If you don't, you get double-yoo-woe-why. Now that the Iowa State University radio stations are now affiliates of Iowa Public Radio, it isn't a big deal. But many on their staff back in the day were guilty of "woe-why."

Likewise with their counterpart WSUI, Iowa City. Go too fast, and it's double-yoo-ess-shoe-why.

In Canon City CO, KRLN is a perfectly good set of calls. But if they come out of your mouth as curl-en, you're talking too fast.

There are no bad call signs, just some that are more easily mangled if you talk too fast.
 
Maybe I should have nominated my college station, WUTM, to the list. But I don't specifically recall any difficulty saying W-U-T-M. ("double-you-you-tee-emm") Maybe it is because I always took it nice and slow!
 
firepoint525 said:
You reminded me of WWWW in Ann Arbor, MI. I am guessing that it was this station from which an announcer introduced Bob Seger at the Live Bullet concerts. I cannot even check my own record because the gatefold cover is stuck together as a result of the 2010 floods here.
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The current WWWW is 102.9 in Ann Arbor. The WWWW that would have introduced Seger was the original, on 106.7 in Detroit, now WDTW. That original "W-4" was the home of Howard Stern for a while.
 
anotherguy said:
Fulton did have a station with the call letters WFUL at one time. Like Maxwell Smart would say, "Missed it by THAT much!!!" :rolleyes:
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And I worked there at one time! (Although the calls at the time were WKZT, the initials of a former (and I believe, deceased by the time I worked there!) owner.) Only problem with the WFUL call letters is that if you put an "a" in front of it, it becomes "awful"!
 
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Fulton-Union City? Wow! Well, at least they dodged a bullet by not going for W-F-U-C...
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Terry Hailey (GM of the station) wanted it to be WENK-FM (giving it the same calls as his AM station), but claims that the FCC was not doing that at the time (1982-ish). The calls represent "west Kentucky, Fulton," although other than as a COL, the station has next to nothing to do with Fulton. The transmitter site is near South Fulton.

And WWKF was at one time WFUL-FM, up until about that 1982 date referenced above.
 
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FM at State University of New York - Stony Brook - WUSB. Anything with a 'W' and a 'U' in it would be tough. For which I might nominate WUUU in Louisiana.
 
longtime listener

In Miami late 70s it seemed a good idea on paper but always sounded awkward when the talk hosts and news readers would stumble over "790 WNWS." Talker Neil Rogers joked about it for years after leaving, but then again he took shots at everything for a good laugh.
 
A guy I knew went to "WFMW-FM, Madisonville, KY" which was in the process of flipping to WKTG. While waiting for the flip, he was playing slushy beautiful music on WFMW-FM.

I always found WMVR, Sidney, Ohio to be a pain to say.
 
"Dub-Yuh, See, Dub-Yuh, Bee"......(Old WCWB-TV, Macon, Georgia).
 
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