UnSource:List of broadcast and entertainment acronyms
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See also List of backronyms
This list contains material from Wikipedia:List of backronyms, open-content under the GFDL. The original article has long since been deleted.
Contents
Audio and video[edit]
| Not originally acronyms | ||
|---|---|---|
| Akai | Another Kaput Audio Invention | |
| Bose | Buy Other Sound Equipment Better Order Something Else | |
| Koss | K-tel's Obsolete Sound System Keep Ordering Spare Speakers | |
| Lear | Lousy Eighttrack Audio Recordings (8-track cartridges, oddly, were invented by the brain behind LearJet as a first-and-only foray into car audio. Now obsolete.) | |
| Sony | Seems Obsolete Next Year Soon – Only Not Yet Send Over Nippon Yen | |
| Teac | Tapes Eaten And Chewed | |
| Re-interpreted acronyms | ||
| ATSC | Advanced Television Systems Committee (North America/South Korea digital) |
Always The Same Colour Analogue Televisions Seldom Compatible/Scrapped Completely A Terribly Steep Cliff Always Trying to Sell Converters |
| CAM | Conditional access module | Costly Add-on Module (a PCMCIA-like device to accept smart cards for pay-TV on DVB receivers) |
| DVB | Digital Video Broadcasting | Deficient Video Bandwidth (due to overuse of compression to put multiple channels on same carrier) |
| DVD | Digital video disc, Digital versatile disc | Defective Video Display |
| FTA | Free-to-air TV | Folks Talking Arabic, in reference to the large quantity of available free ethnic television |
| JBL | Junk, But Loud | |
| JVC | Japan Victor Company | Junk, Very Cheap |
| LG | Lucky Goldstar | Life's Garbage, Lousy Garbage (actually "Lucky Goldstar" amounts to the same thing - but slogan is "Life's Good" to effectively obscure the original Goldstar name). |
| -LP and -CA (TV callsigns) |
"Low Power" and "Class A" | "Lousy Picture/Lousy Programmes", "Crappy Audio" (too many commercial low-power TV operations are informercial-laden UHF broadcasts of abysmally-low quality) |
| NTSC | National Television System Committee (US, 1941/1953) | Never The Same Colour Never Twice the Same Colour No Two the Same Colour Never Tested Since Christ |
| PAL | Phase Alternate by Line (UK/Germany) | Peace/Perfect At Last Picture Always Lousy Pale And Lurid |
| RCA | Radio Corporation of America | Really Cheap Audio Rednecks Can't Agree Really Crappy Appliance |
| SCART | Syndicat des Constructeurs d'Appareils Radiorécepteurs et Téléviseurs | Strange Connector Americans Rarely Try |
| SECAM | Sequence de couleurs avec mémoire | System Essentially Contrary to the American Method Shows Every Colour All Murky Système Elégant Contre les AMéricains (Elegant System Against the Americans SECAM is the French colour analogue TV system) |
| SP/DIF | Sony/Philips Digital Interface | Strange Plug, Does It Fit? |
| VCR | Video cassette recorder (earlier VTR's used open-reel tapes) | Vile Crap, Regurgitated |
| VHS | Vertical Helical Scan | Virtually Hopeless Signal (originally stood for Vertical Helical Scan but believed by most people to mean Video Home System) |
Broadcasters[edit]
Networks[edit]
| ABC | Annoying Basically Crud Another Boring Channel Always Bull Crap Animal Broadcasting Company (short-lived slogan that appeared during Saturday morning cartoons) Anything But Colour |
| BBC | Blokes, Blimey Chaps Blair Broadcasting Corporation Brow-Beating Communists |
| CBC | Communist Broadcasting Corporation Canada's Best Commentators Canadian Broadcorping Castration |
| CKO | Completely Kaput. Off-air. |
| CBS | Complete BS Constantly Boring Shows |
| CCTV | Closed-Circuit Television Communism's Censored Television |
| CMT | Coal Miners' Television Canned Meat and Turnips |
| CNN | Completely Nasty Network Completely Neophyte Newscasters Continuously Negative News Chicken Noodle News Chicken Noodle Network Clinton News Network Commie/Communist News Network Comedy News Network Conservative News Network Contains No News. |
| CSPAN | Congressmen Stonewall Progress, Americans Notice. |
| CSTV | Cheap Shot Television |
| CTV | Canned Trivial Video |
| CW | Can't Wait (refers to the fact that some people want to see CW on the air ASAP) Cool, What is it? Champions and Winners Completely Worthless Could Work Continuous Wave (morse code) |
| FOX News | Foundation Of Xenophobes Needlessly Embellishing War Stories |
| ION | Infomercials' Own Network |
| LIN | Lesbians In Need |
| MSG | Must Serve God |
| MSNBC | More Stupid News Broadcast Constantly |
| MTV | More Turkey and Veal |
| NBC | Neutered By Cable Neutered By Censors Never Bull Crap Nothing But Cosby Naruto, Bo^7, and Caseclosed (sic) |
| NPR | National Propaganda Radio |
| PBS | Pretty Bland Stuff Precious Broadcasting System (National Lampoon parody of NY broadcaster WPBS-TV, but "donate $x million and win our studio buildings in downtown Manhattan" suggests a WNET 13 parody) Petroleum's British Subsidiary (because of sponsorship by oil companies and heavy use of British-originated programming) |
| RKO | Red Kills Orange Really Kinky Orgasms |
| [[wikipedia:Radio Telef%EDs %C9ireann|RTE]] | Really Terrible Entertainment |
| SBS | Sex Between Soccer (Australian multi-lingual public broadcaster which regularly screens soccer games, and international movies with frequent nudity and sex scenes) Soccer Broadcasting Station Stupid Brits Suck |
| TBN | The Blasphemy Network (moniker applied by Apologetics Index[1] and others[2] due to use of prosperity theology doctrine to solicit ever-increasing amounts of money with little or no accountability.) |
| UPN | Unlimited Programming for Negros UnderPaid Niggers Urban Programming Network UnPopular Network Urban People's Network Used Parts Network |
| WB | Wasted Bandwidth We're Black! Watched Barely What a Bore |
| WTN | Whining Television Network (Originally Womens Television Network) |
| YES | You Eat Shit? |
Reinterpreted ITU radio callsigns[edit]
| Station | Freq. | Market | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CF-CK | Canada | ||
| CFNY | 102.1MHz | Toronto | Canada's First New Youth Canada Fucks New York |
| CHUM | 1050kHz, 104.5MHz | Toronto | Come Hand Us Money Can't Help Us Mature |
| K | Western US | (west of the Mississippi River) | |
| KMIA | 720kHz | Phoenix | Killed, Missing In Action (transmitters sabotaged in March 2006 using welding torches to cut four of seven towers, causing their collapse) |
| VO | Newfoundland | The Dominion of Newfoundland radio callsign prefix VO has typically been backronymed as "voice of". See Canada CF-CK for commercial stations originally on-air after 1949. | |
| VOCM | 590kHz | St. John's | "Voice Of Church (of) Mary" "Voice Of the Common Man" (if one were being critical) "Voice Of Complete Morons". |
| VOAR | 1230kHz | St. John's | Voice of Adventist (Church) Radio Voice Of African Radio (Internet-based namesake) |
| VOWR | 800kHz | St. John's | Voice of Wesley (United-Methodist Church) Radio |
| W | Eastern US | (east of the Mississippi River) | |
| WBAP | 820kHz | Dallas | We're Bad Ass People |
| WDAO | 1210kHz | Dayton | White Days Are Over (earlier Black format) |
| WIP | 610kHz | Philadelphia | We're In Pain Work In Progress |
| WKRP | n/a | Cincinnati | We Keep Radios Playing |
| WKTU | 103.5 | New York City | We Kill The Undead |
| WLS WLW |
890kHz 700kHz |
Chicago Cincinnati |
World's Loudest Wireless (historic experimental 500kW AM broadcast, abandoned due to interference with other stations) World's Loudest Station was World's Largest Store (from Sears-owned radio) and Worlds Largest Wireless (respectively) |
| WLYK | 102.7MHz | Cape Vincent | Will Let You Know |
| WNYC | 93.9MHz 820kHz |
NPR New York City |
We Need Your Contributions |
| WPGC | 1580kHz 95.5MHz |
Washington | We're Poor, Got Cash? |
| WPTF | 680kHz | Raleigh-Durham | We Pity The Fool |
| WSMB | 1350kHz | Memphis | We're the Super Mario Bros.! |
| WTMI | n/a | Miami | Way Too Much Information (a one-time classical music station that kept their newscasts under one minute) |
| WYFQ | 930kHz | BBN Charlotte |
Watch it, You Fucking Queer! |
Reinterpreted ITU television callsigns[edit]
| CF-CK | Canada | (CB, nominally allocated to Chile, is also used by some CBC stations) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CBOT | 4 | CBC | Ottawa | CBC Ottawa TV | Can't Blame Others Totally |
| CFTO | 9 | CTV | Scarberia | Canada's Foremost, Toronto's Own | Can't Fool Torontonians Often Can't Feel Totally Objective |
| CHCH | 11 | ONtv | Hamilton | Hamilton's Channel | Can't Help Can't Hear Completely Hopeless Crap (from) Hamilton |
| CHOT | 40 | TVA | Hull | Hull-Ottawa TV | Completely Hideous Outaouais Télévision |
| CJOH | 6, 8 13 |
CTV | Nepean | Ottawa-Hull | Complete Junk (from) Ottawa-Hull |
| CKND | 9 | Global | Winnipeg | KCND Pembina, a station this one replaced | Codename: Kids Next Door |
| CKWS | 11 | CBC | Kingston | Kingston Whig-Standard | Capturing Kingston's Worst Signal |
| K | Western US | (west of the Mississippi) | |||
| KABC | 7 | ABC | Los Angeles | American Broadcast Co. | Keeps Annoying Bored Californians |
| KCAL | 9 | Ind. | Los Angeles | California | Keep Checking Alliance Links |
| KCDN | 35 | DayStar | Kansas City | Kansas City Daystar Network | Keep Crapping Day and Night |
| KCWE | 29 | CW | Kansas City | Kansas City's World of Entertainment | Kansas CW Entertainment (callsign predates Columbia-Warner's "The CW" ) |
| KDKA (WDTV) |
2 | CBS | Pittsburgh | Dumont Television Network | WDTV: We're Dead, Tell Victor |
| KEYE | 42 | CBS | Austin | EYE:the CBS logo | Keep Eating Your Eyeballs |
| KMAX | 31 | CW | Sacramento | MAX:maximum | Killer Movies Are X-rated (station started with an all-movie format) |
| KPBS | 15 | PBS | San Diego | Public Broadcasting Service | Kids, Please Be Silent! |
| W | Eastern US | (east of the Mississippi) | |||
| WABC | 7 | ABC | New York City | American Broadcast Company | We'll Always Be Crying/Cynical We're A Boring Channel |
| WAFB | 9 | CBS | Baton Rouge | American Family Broadcasting | We're Always Fucking Bush |
| WBFS | 33 | MyTV | Miami | We're Brain Food for Suckers Watch Badly Fading Signal We Broadcast Florida's Stupidity Winners? Bull-Fucking-Shit! | |
| WBZ WJZ |
4 13 |
CBS | Boston Baltimore |
From WBZ radio and former WJZ radio in New Jersey |
Who're the Bastards/Jerks at Zope? (Zope is the company that manages the websites for WBZ-TV and WJZ, along with their sister stations) |
| WCAU | 10 | NBC | Philadelphia | From sequential AM radio callsign[3] | We're Crap And Unwatchable |
| WCAX | 3 | CBS | Burlington | College of Agriculture extension | We Clearly Are eXperimenting (In the first days of TV, stations did use W2X... or K2X... calls where X legally indicated experimental status; WCAX-TV is not of this series.) |
| WCBS | 2 | CBS | New York City | Columbia Broadcast System | We Can't Be Serious |
| WCCB | 18 | Fox | Charlotte | Charlotte's Cy Bahakel (founder and owner) | Where Communists Come to Breed |
| WCCO | 4 | CBS | Minneapolis | Washburn Crosby Co. | Watch Comedy Central On-air |
| WCIU | 26 | Ind./MeTV | Chicago | Chicago IL UHF | We Can't Inform U (refers to the lack of news) |
| WCNY | 24 | PBS | Syracuse | Central New York | We Constantly Need You |
| WDCA | 20 | MyTV | Washington | District of Columbia | We're Dick Clark's Ancestors |
| WDSU | 6 | NBC | New Orleans | DeSoto Hotel (former location) | We're Drowned, Still Underwater (one of the New Orleans transmitters flooded by Hurricane Katrina in 2005) |
| WECT | 6.1 | NBC | Wilmington | Eastern Carolina Television | We're Exceptionally Crappy Television |
| WETM | 18 | NBC | Elmira | Elmira Times Mirror (former owner) | We Expect Too Much |
| WGCL | 46 | CBS | Atlanta | We're Georgia's CLear TV (former slogan) | We're the Gulf Coast League! |
| WGN | 9 | CW | Chicago | Worlds Greatest Newspaper (from Tribune-owned WGN radio) | We Got Nudes |
| WGTW | 48 | TBN | Philadelphia | We're Great Television to Watch | We've Got To Wait |
| WHNS | 21 | Fox | Greenville NC | Harry 'N Stella (Pappas) (original owners) | We Have No Signal We Have No Soul |
| WITI | 6 | Fox | Milwaukee | Independent Television Inc. (original owner) | We're Idiots-Total Idiots |
| WJAR | 10 | NBC | Providence | From WJAR radio | We're Jerks All Right |
| WKBD | 50 | CW | Detroit | Kaiser Broadcasting Detroit | We Kill Bitches Dead |
| WKBW | 7 | ABC | Buffalo | From WKBW (Well Known Bible Witness) radio | We Know Buffalo's Watching Wimpy Kitty Baby Whiners (used by Jim Carrey's character in the movie Bruce Almighty after getting fired by the station) |
| WKYC | 3 | NBC | Cleveland | KYW Cleveland | We Know You Cleveland |
| WLAE | 32 | PBS | New Orleans | Louisiana Education | We Laugh At Everyone |
| WLBT | 3 | NBC | Jackson | Lamar Broadcast Television | We Lynch Black Trespassers (original station lost its license due to racist coverage of 1960's US civil rights movement and repeated censorship of network news broadcasts. A new owner under a new license later was to implement racial integration) |
| WLNY | 55.1 | Ind. | New York City | Long Island NY | We Love New York |
| WLS | 7 | ABC | Chicago | World's Largest Store (from Sears-owned radio) | We Love Sex |
| WLWC | 28 | CW | Providence | We Love Wooden Cars, We Love Watching Cable | |
| WNAB | 58 | CW | Nashville | Nashville WB | We're Nearing Another Bankruptcy (past owner had gone bankrupt) |
| WNBC | 4 | NBC | New York City | National Broadcast Company | Watch News Because of Chuck (Chuck Scarborough, 11PM newscast anchor since 1974) |
| WNDY | 23 | MyTV | Indianapolis | NDY:Indy | We're Not Dead Yet! |
| WNED | 17 | PBS | Buffalo-Niagara | Western NY Education | We Need Every Dime We Need Every Dollar |
| WNEG | 32 | CBS | Toccoa-Athens | NorthEast Georgia | We're Not Even Good We're Never Ever Great |
| WNET | 13 | PBS | Newark-New York City | National Educational Television | Watching for Nine/Eleven Terrorists |
| WNYT | 13 | NBC | Albany | NY Television | We Need Your Time |
| WNYW | 5 | Fox | New York City | From WNEW radio calls | What's News, You'll Wonder |
| WOIO | 19 | CBS | Cleveland | Ohio | We're Overtly Idiotic, Okay? |
| WOWK | 13 | CBS | Charleston | Ohio, WV, Kentucky | Westwood One Wants Kash |
| WPBS-TV | 16 | PBS | New York | Watertown Public Broadcast Service | We'll Pledge-Break Soon, Thanks Viewers! |
| WPCW | 19 | CW | Jeanette-Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh CW | We Pittsburghers Can't Wait |
| WPIX | 11 | CW | New York | PIX: Picture newspaper | We Prefer channel IX |
| WPRI | 12 | CBS | Providence | Providence RI | We're Probably Really Ill |
| WRAL | 5 | CBS | North Carolina | Raleigh | We Really Are Lesbians |
| WRDC | 28 | MyTV | North Carolina | Raleigh-Durham-ChapelHill | We Really Don't Care (said by a disgruntled ex-employee after being fired by the new owners in 1992) |
| WSB | 2 | ABC | Atlanta | Welcome South, Brother (from AM station) | We Suck Balls |
| WSLS | 10 | NBC | Roanoke | Shenandoah Life Station | Watch Sex, Love & Secrets |
| WSOC | 9 | ABC | Charlotte | We Serve Our Community Sounds Of Charlotte (both from WSOC radio) |
We Show Only Crime We Show Only Crap |
| WTBS | 17 | TBS | Atlanta | Turner Broadcast System | We Take Broads (or Bitches) to Sell Previous callsign WTCG: Watch This Channel Grow |
| WTEN | 10 | ABC | Albany | Ten (channel number) | We Televise Evil News |
| WTVJ | 6 | NBC | Miami | We're TV for Jerks/Jackasses We Televise Junk | |
| WUPA | 69 | CW | Atlanta | UPN Atlanta | We're UnderPaid Atlantans |
| WUPL | 54 | MyTV | New Orleans | UPN Louisiana | We're UnderPaid Lesbians |
| WUPV | 65 | CW | Richmond | UPN Virginia | We're UnderPaid Virgins |
| WVIT | 30 | NBC | Hartford | Viacom Television | Watch Very Insipid Television |
| WWAY-TV | 3.1 | ABC | North Carolina | Way | We Want All of You - To Vomit |
| WWHB | 48 | Azteca | Palm Beach | William H. Brothers (former owner) | We Want Hot Bitches |
| WWJ | 62 | CBS | Detroit | From WWJ radio (was WGPR: Where God's Presence Radiates) |
We Watch Junk We Want Jordan (of sports fans wanting Michael Jordan on their team) WGPR: We Got Pulled from Riyadh (the original ethnic programming was dropped once CBS purchased the station to replace Channel 2, now Fox) |
| WWLP | 22 | NBC | Springfield MA | William L. Putnam | Was Woefully Low-Powered (WWLP and former rebroadcaster WRLP-TV were named for station founder William and brother Roger Lowell Putnam. The region is mountainous, making UHF reception difficult. Hence WRLP "we're really low-powered" as full-power repeater, long-since decommissioned and relocated to Utah.) |
| WWMT | 3 | CBS | Kalamazoo | We're West Michigan Television | Why Watch My Television? We Want More Time |
| WWOR | 9 | CW | New York | From WOR radio | War of the Worlds Own Radio |
| WWNY | 7 | CBS | Carthage | Watertown New York | We're Whining Northern Yokels |
Entertainment[edit]
| Not originally acronyms | |
|---|---|
| Beastie Boys | Boys Entering Anarchistic States Toward Internal Excellence Boys Entering Altered States To Induce Ecstasy |
| Big Daddy Kane | King Asiatic, Nobody's Equal. |
| Group W | Great! Really Old UnderPaid Workers! |
| KISS | Kids/Knights In Satan's Service |
| Rap | Retards Attempting Poetry; with the entrance of white rappers like Eminem, this can be retro-fitted to Cracker Retards Attempting Poetry. |
| Westwood One | We Especially Steal Television's Weaker, Older, and Out-of-style Deadbeats, and Open New Establishments |
| Wu-Tang Clan | Witty Unpredictable Talent And Natural Game We Usually Take All Niggers' Garments. |
| Re-interpreted acronyms | |
| AC/DC | Anti-Christ/Devil's Children |
| ATHF | Americans Tend to Have Fun Always Talking to Harry and Florinda Assistance in Telemarketing, Hacking, and Fornicating |
| CSI | Can't See It Corpses Seldom Impress |
| CSI: NY | Can't See It? Not Yet. |
| DS | Die Satan! Dark Sun Dallas Stars Done with Sex Deal with Satan Dark Shadows Dark Skies |
| EPCOT | Every Person's Country, Only Tiny |
| FMA | Foreign Money Association For More Airtime Fuck Me in the Ass Florida, Mississippi and Alabama |
| MTM | Must Tell Mary |
| NFL | No Fun League |
| NTA | Not That Awful Not That American Never Totally Anticipated Now To Atlanta Never Tell All New/No Theaters Anticipated Not a Theater Available Nice Timing Asshole Not Today Asshole No Time at All Nice Try Asshole |
| NVE | (Australian Office for Film and Literature Classification, used for pornography) Not Very Entertaining. |
| SNL | So Not Lucky So Not in Love |
