Profane TV Station Call Letters

A soon-to-operate Maui television station has petitioned the FCC for and received station-identifying call letters that misspell a four letter word I won't print. The call sign starts with the same letter as almost all stations West of the Mississippi, rhymes with affront, reminds me of Georgia O'Keefe paintings, and sounds like the word voted most obscene in Britain (PDF).

From Skokie, Ill., comes a sincere apology "to anyone that was offended," said Kevin Bae, vice president of KM Communications Inc., who requested and received [the call letters that sound like the word that is synonymous with berk in cockney rhyming slang] and KWTF. It is "extremely embarrassing for me and my company and we will file to change those call letters immediately."

. . . .

The call letter snafu was a source of great mirth for Bae's attorney.

"I can't tell you how long he laughed at me when he learned of my gaffe," Bae said.

Broadcasters for generations have joked among themselves about call letters resembling off-color words or acronyms knowing the FCC would never approve their assignment—but that was before computerization.

. . . .

However, assignment of call letters actually is an automated process, according to Mary Diamond of the FCC's Office of Media Relations. Broadcasters use the FCC Web site to request and receive call letters with no oversight from Beavis, his partner, or any FCC regulator.

Link (via News of the Weird Daily). Assuming the station keeps the call letters granted to it by the FCC, what will the regulators do if its on-air personalities utter them in a "fleeting and isolated" way?

Indexed by tags television, FCC, obscenity, profanity, call letters, station.
Image credits: Waterfall-No. III—Iao Valley, Georgia O'Keefe, American, 1939, courtesy the Honolulu Academy of Arts, borrowed for news-reporting and comment purposes.