Broadcast stations in North America generally use callsigns in the international series.
International shortwave The US government-operated international broadcaster the
Voice of America no longer uses callsigns assigned to it; however,
Radio Canada International's transmitter in
Sackville, New Brunswick was assigned
CKCX. Privately operated
shortwave stations, like
WWCR and
CFRX, also have call signs.
Canada In Canada, the publicly owned
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation uses
CB; privately owned commercial broadcast stations use primarily
CF and
CH through
CK prefixes. Four stations licensed to
St. John's by the
Dominion of Newfoundland government (
VOWR,
VOAR-FM,
VOCM, and
VOCM-FM) retain their original
VO calls. The
CB prefix used by CBC stations actually belongs to
Chile rather than Canada, and is in use by the CBC through an international agreement. Low-power
broadcast translator stations begin with
VF for FM and
CH for TV, followed by four numerals assigned sequentially. Unlike the United States, all digital TV stations use the "-DT" suffix instead of keeping the "-TV" suffix.
Mexico In Mexico,
AM radio stations use
XE call signs (such as
XEW-AM), while the majority of
FM radio and television stations use
XH. Broadcast callsigns are normally four or five letters in length, plus the
-FM or
-TV suffix where applicable, though several older stations have only three letters. The longest callsign is six letters, plus suffix:
XHMORE-FM. All Mexican TV stations using digital TV signals use the "-TDT" suffix.
United States In the United States, the first letter is generally
K for stations west of the
Mississippi River (including
Alaska,
American Samoa,
Guam,
Hawaii, and
Northern Mariana Islands) and
W for those east of the Mississippi River (including
Puerto Rico and the
U.S. Virgin Islands). Except for those with their
radio channel or physical
TV channel number in them, all new callsigns have been four letters (plus any suffix like -FM or -TV) for some decades, though there are historical
three-letter callsigns still in use today, such as
KSL in Salt Lake City and
WGN in Chicago.
Co-owned stations were also allowed to adopt their original short AM callsign like
WGN-TV and
KSL-TV, even after new ones were prohibited. There are a number of exceptions to the east/west rule, such as
KDKA in Pittsburgh and
WFAA in Dallas-Fort Worth, but these are historical artifacts
grandfathered from a
rule change in the 1920s. Most of the exceptions are located in the
media markets immediately adjacent to the river, in the state of
Louisiana in the metropolitan areas of
Baton Rouge and
greater New Orleans, and markets north of
the river's source such as
Fargo-Moorhead and
Duluth-Superior. The westernmost station in the continental United States beginning with W is
WOAI in San Antonio.
WVUV-FM in Fagaitua,
American Samoa, is the westernmost station with a W call sign.
KYW in Philadelphia is currently the easternmost station with a K call sign. Another exception to this is that
NIST time-broadcasting stations have a three- or four-letter callsign beginning with
WWV. The three current government-operated time stations,
WWV (and longwave
sister station WWVB), and
WWVH, are located in
Fort Collins, Colorado and
Kekaha, Hawaii, respectively, both of which would normally use call signs beginning with "K". However, the rule dividing W and K only applies to stations governed by the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC), whereas
U.S. federal government stations are governed by the
NTIA. This means that like NIST, the hundreds of
NOAA Weather Radio stations across the country have a random mix of W and K callsigns, as do
traveler information stations operated by the
National Park Service. ==Central America==