This product is meant for educational purposes only. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Void where prohibited. Some assembly required. The opinions expressed are not necessarily representative of the staff and/or management of the station. Batteries not included. Contents may settle during shipment. Use only as directed. No other warranty expressed or implied. Tumble dry on low heat. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Elvis has left the building. Apply only to affected area. May be too intense for some viewers. Do not stamp. This end up. Walk, don't run. Use other side for additional listings. For recreational use only. Handle with care. Do not disturb. Not responsible for personal belongings. If condition persists, consult your physician. No serviceable parts inside. Freshest if eaten before date on carton. Subject to change without notice. No shirt, no shoes, no service. Simulated picture. No postage necessary if mailed within the United States. Dramatization. No diving. Please remain seated until the ride has come to a complete stop. Breaking seal constitutes acceptance of agreement. For off-road use only. As seen on TV. One size fits all. Many suitcases look alike. Close cover before striking. Colors may, in time, fade. Keep away from sunlight. We have sent the forms which seem right for you. Slippery when wet. For office use only. Drop in any mailbox. Edited for television. Keep cool; process promptly. Keep out of the reach of children. Post office will not deliver without postage. Action figures sold separately. Return to sender, no forwarding address on file, unable to forward. Not responsible for direct, indirect, incidental, or consequential damages resulting from any defect, error, or failure to perform. Shake well before using. At participating locations only. Not the Beatles, but an incredible simulation. Penalty for private use. See label for consequence. 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Sometimes, a station uses it's call letters -- KDWB, WABC, KOIT -- and it's fairly easy to suss out which station it is. But maybe your town has a station that calls itself "Star" or "KISS FM" or "Z100" or whatever. Believe it or not, so does pretty much every other town in America. So, a lot of times, the only way to tell for sure exactly what station you're listening to is its' legal ID.

Simply put, the legal ID is a station's legal call letters, followed by the city the station is licensed to. The only things permissible between the calls and the COL are the licensee's name, the frequency and the channel number. If a station is simulcast, you have to give the frequency in each station's ID.

The Legalese
[Code of Federal Regulations]
[Title 47, Volume 4, Parts 70 to 79]
[Revised as of October 1, 2000]
[CITE: 47CFR73.1201]
[Page 282-283]

TITLE 47--TELECOMMUNICATIONCHAPTER I--FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS
COMMISSION (Continued) PART 73--RADIO BROADCAST SERVICES--Table of Contents Subpart H--Rules Applicable to All Broadcast Stations Sec. 73.1201 Station identification.

(a) When regularly required. Broadcast station identification announcements shall be made:

(1) At the beginning and ending of each time of operation, and

(2) Hourly, as close to the hour as feasible, at a natural break in program offerings. Television and Class A television broadcast stations may make these announcements visually or aurally.

(b) Content.

(1) Official station identification shall consist of the station's call letters immediately followed by the community or communities specified in its license as the station's location: Provided, That the name of the licensee or the station's frequency or channel number, or both, as stated on the station's license may be inserted between the call letters and station location. No other insertion is permissible.

(2) A station may include in its official station identification the name of any additional community or communities, but the community to which the station is licensed must be named first.

(c) Channel.

(1) General. Except as otherwise provided in this paragraph, in making the identification announcement the call letters shall be given only on the channel identified thereby.

(2) Simultaneous AM (535-1605 kHz) and AM (1605-1705 kHz) broadcasts. If the same licensee operates an AM broadcast station in the 535-1605 kHz band and an AM broadcast station in the 1605-1705 kHz band with both stations licensed to the same community and simultaneously broadcasts the same programs over the facilities of both such stations, station identification announcements may be made jointly for both stations for periods of such simultaneous operations.

(3) Satellite operation. When programming of a broadcast station is rebroadcast simultaneously over the facilities of a satellite station, the originating station may make identification announcements for the satellite station for periods of such simultaneous operation.

(i) In the case of a television broadcast station, such announcements, in addition to the information required by paragraph (b)(1) of this section, shall include the number of the channel on which each station is operating.

(ii) In the case of aural broadcast stations, such announcements, in addition to the information required by paragraph (b)(1) of this section, shall include the frequency on which each station is operating.

(d) Subscription television stations (STV).

The requirements for official station identification applicable to TV stations will apply to Subscription TV stations except, during STV-encoded programming such station identification is not required. However, a station identification announcement will be made immediately prior to and following the encoded Subscription TV program period.

[34 FR 19762, Dec. 17, 1969, as amended at 37 FR 23726, Nov. 8, 1972; 39 FR 6707, Feb. 22, 1974; 39 FR 9442, Mar. 11, 1974; 41 FR 29394, July 16, 1976; 47 FR 3791, Jan. 27, 1982; 48 FR 51308, Nov. 8, 1983; 56 FR 64872, Dec. 12, 1991; 65 FR 30003, May 10, 2000]

Recording Tips
Here's the thing: it's not only what the legal ID sounds like, but also the context in which it's presented. With that in mind, here's what I look for in an ID tape:

• Legal IDs should come from actual off-air airchecks. We won't post production pieces out of the automation or recordings off a webstream.
• The actual legal ID of the stations, even if it's a mumbled mess buried in the :50 stopset.
• At least 10 seconds of programming on both sides of the ID (not including dead air around the ID). Because context is so important, we will no longer post IDs without surrounding programming.
• If it's in a jingle/sweeper, the whole jingle (including jock talk, SFX, etc), plus the 10 sec. of programming on either side.
• If it's done in a jock talk break, the entire break (or approximately 30 sec. of it if it's terribly long), plus the 10 sec. of programming on either side.
• On high quality cassette, CD, or high quality MP3 (no less than 128 kpbs/44 khz).
• We suggest just rolling tape for a few minutes to catch the ID.
• Please provide the month and year the recording was made. IDs without month and year won't be posted.
• E-mail ID audio to tophour@gmail.com. While e-mail is the preferred method of submission, FTP or a snail mail address is available. E-mail Brian for the scoop.
• For the lawyers (and yes, it's an issue): We encourage submissions to tophour.com and tophour.net under the above conditions. Tophour management reserves the right to select what materials will be used on-site. There is no financial compensation for contributions. All submissions retain original copyright by the radio stations who produced the broadcast(s) and their ownership. Files will be removed upon written request by station ownership. All submissions become the property of tophour.net and tophour.com.

The Annoying Details (For True Geeks Only)
We get questions about how to name the MP3 files that are sent. Really, so long as we can tell what each file is, anything is fine. But if you really want the official Toppy naming scheme, here are some examples:

• am0600_2006-01_wmt_bdavis.mp3
• fm0883_2006-01_kcmp_jblow.mp3
• fm1027_2006-01_kiis-fm_rdees.mp3

Here's how to do it: band, four-digit frequency, year-month, call letters, first inital and last name.

Sorry you asked?

We also get asked about what to put in the ID3 tags for the MP3s. Again, we can handle that ourselves, but here's the geekly details:

• In the Title field: frequency, call letters, city of license.
  (EX: 102.7 KIIS-FM/Los Angeles, CA)
• In the Artist field: the month and year the clip was recorded.
  (EX: January 2006)
• In the Album field: "Contributor:" and your name.
  (EX: Contributor: Joe Blow)

Yup...the anal-retentiveness is stunning, isn't it?

If you have questions not answered here, e-mail Brian. • E-mail audio here.

Editors: Brian Davis, Scott Fybush

Associate Editors: Jeff Lehmann, Lou Pickney, Blaine Thompson

To contact an individual editor, click on one of the names above.

To e-mail audio contributions, first read this page for important information and then e-mail tophour@gmail.com.

To contribute via snail-mail or other means, e-mail Brian.

How to describe what Toppy's all about? Tough call...so, here's what some others have said:

From the August 17, 2005 (Brian's 31st birthday!) issue of Radio World:

Top of the Hour: The Real Deal
by Ken R.

Any station can call itself "Kiss," "Magic," "Mix" or "Jack." You probably can hear one of each if you live in a big city.

Across our land, stations are allowed to play the same music, feature the same voice-tracked jocks and syndicated talk shows. They can even use the same jingles.

But somewhere near the top of the hour, you'll hear the one element that is unique to each terrestrial radio station in the United States: its legal ID.

According to FCC Title 47 Volume 4 Parts 70-79 as revised Oct. 1, 2000, the rules are quite clear: A station must provide its actual call letters immediately followed by the community or communities specified in its license. This must be done as close to the top of the hour as possible.

Today many "move-in" stations bury this information between spots and get on with the hits. Others trumpet their hometown proudly. But the legal ID is a radio tradition going back to the earliest days when transmissions were sometimes hard to hear through the static.

Brian Davis is a young man who realizes the importance of this rule and celebrates the legal ID on his non-profit Web site, www.tophour.net

Don't touch that dial
"I'm not the traditional radio geek," said Davis. "I'm a music guy and decided that I wanted to be on the radio just to play the music. The genesis of my site goes back to when I was at Brown Institute Broadcast School in Minneapolis in 1995. I read a lot about radio to supplement my education and I became interested in the Internet.

"Then I took a road trip and realized that stations were similar all over, but then I grasped the concept that the one thing that's always different is the legal ID. I thought the Web site would be a cool way to highlight that one difference."

Tophour.net signed on in July 2001 and when you visit Davis' site, you can hear clips of this phenomenon going back to the early 1960s. Just click on your favorite city and station and take a listen. He features big markets and small, 50,000-watt blowtorches and 250-watt mom n' pops.

Google's AdSense service supplies a small income stream to keep the site going, but Davis says his costs are low.

"It really only costs me about $150 per year," he said. "But I did have Christina Miraglia from Moxie Design Studios help me out with a redesign, which raised my costs quite a bit this year. However I'm hoping the increased Google ad hits and ID contributions from new visitors will help justify the expense."

The site gets a boost from co-editor Lou Pickney, who also runs the Tampa-based site www.radiohottalk.com

Davis will accept monetary donations via PayPal but doesn't really press the issue.

"I would much rather people send me audio contributions of their favorite top of the hour IDs," he said. "There are a lot of other sites like www.reelradio.com and www.fybush.com that could benefit more from your financial help."

Davis is 30 years old and his "day gig" is assistant program director/music director and afternoon on-air personality at WKSZ(FM), Appleton/Green Bay, Wis. Even at his tender age, he is able to contrast radio in the year 2005 to radio as it existed 40 years ago.

"There are fewer differences from market to market today," he said. "But people have so many other alternate choices including iPods, satellite radio, LPFM and more. It's so niched that a 'one format fits all' radio station probably won't work today. That's why the legal ID is so cool."

Ken R. is a former broadcaster who enjoyed hearing Dan Ingram intone, "WABC, New York."

Since that article was published, Scott and Blaine have joined, we've had a couple (including one terribly unfortunate) design changes, we moved from .net to .com and it doesn't really cost me that much anymore.

Want another? Okay:

From the September 23, 2005 issue of The Daily Breeze:

On the airwaves: Old station IDs provide memorable entertainment
By Richard Wagoner

Some of the most memorable moments from radio stations come from what would first seem to be a very unlikely source: an FCC requirement to state the station's call sign and city of license as close to the top of the hour as programming will allow.

Yet these legal IDs are memorable because they are among the very few constants on many stations; now that jingles are relatively rare, they often are the only constant a station has.

Keeping in mind that I am a radio dork, I can actually remember quite a few legal IDs from the past and present. From the famous "KHJ, Los Angeles" to the less famous "Maximum Hits, K-E-Z-Y, Anaheim"; from the quick one that was heard on the original great KMPC to the "voice" of KIIS-FM.

KFI has a long tradition of great IDs. Back when the station played music, mention was often made of being "Western America's Most Powerful Radio Station" before the singers sang "KFI Los Angeles." Now you always know which station you are tuned to when you hear a woman's voice whisper, "Los Angeles, Orange County" right before a sample of the song "Round and Round" by Ratt introduces the news.

I even recall the cool Spanish ID for XETRA when I listened to the Mighty 690's top-40 hits … hits played at fast speed, if you recall, and the explosion that preceded the calls of "KFM — BFM, San Diego."

Turns out I'm not the only radio dork around. Brian Davis, assistant programmer and music director at WKSZ/Appleton-Green Bay, Wis., has set up a Web site dedicated to legal IDs — www.tophour.net.

The site started in 2001 and now has recordings of hundreds of legal IDs from all over the country, from large cities and small.

As I browsed the San Diego, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles selections, I noted an overabundance of more recent IDs, but I'll try to help fix that with some donations from my own collection of airchecks.

So basically, this is a geek's playground. Enjoy it...have fun...contribute, maybe. Thanks for dropping by.