The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) allocates call sign prefixes for radio and television stations of all types. They also form the basis for, but may not exactly match, aircraft registration identifiers. These prefixes are agreed upon internationally, and are a form of country code. A call sign can be any number of letters and numerals but each country must only use call signs that begin with the characters allocated for use in that country.
Telecommunications in the Bahamas is accomplished through the transmission of information by various types of technologies within The Bahamas, mainly telephones, radio, television, and the Internet.
Call signs are frequently still used by North American broadcast stations, in addition to amateur radio and other international radio stations that continue to identify by call signs worldwide. Each country has a different set of patterns for its own call signs. Call signs are allocated to ham radio stations in Barbados, Canada, Mexico and the United States.
WHO is a commercial AM radio station in Des Moines, Iowa, United States. The station is owned by iHeartMedia and carries a conservative news/talk radio format, with studios on Grand Avenue in Des Moines.
WFNO is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Gretna, Louisiana, and serving the New Orleans metropolitan area. The station is owned by Crocodile Broadcasting and airs a Spanish-language hot adult contemporary radio format.
ZNS is a national television broadcaster operated by the state-owned Broadcasting Corporation of The Bahamas (BCB). ZNS-TV's two transmitters, serving Nassau and Freeport, are the only over-the-air TV stations in the country. The rest of the country receives these channels via Cable Bahamas, a privately held company that maintained an exclusive licence to operate cable TV services until 2009.
Television in the Bahamas was introduced in 1977, though television broadcasts had already been available from the United States for several decades. The television stations in the Bahamas include:
WBTC is an AM radio station in Uhrichsville, Ohio, United States, broadcasting on 1540 kHz with a classic hits format.
WPTT is a commercial AM radio station in Hartford, Wisconsin, serving the Greater Milwaukee radio market. It airs an adult hits radio format and is owned by Tomsun Media LLC, which is operated by David and Connie Stout. The radio studios are on North Main Street at Summer Street in Hartford.
KTGG is a radio station broadcasting from Okemos, Michigan, with a Christian radio format of talk and classical music. It is owned by West Central Michigan Media Ministries and airs programming from Strong Tower Radio, a network heard on about a dozen radio stations around Michigan and one in Illinois.
The Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA) is a representative body for public service broadcasters throughout the Commonwealth, founded in 1945. A not-for-profit non-government organisation, the CBA is funded by subscriptions from 102 members and affiliates from 54 countries. The stated goal of the CBA is to promote best practices in public service broadcasting and to foster freedom of expression. It also serves to provide support and assistance to its members through training, bursaries, consultancies, networking opportunities and materials for broadcast.
KXEL, branded as News/Talk 1540, is a Class A, clear-channel radio station serving the Waterloo and Cedar Rapids metropolitan areas with a All-news radio/Talk radio format.
ZNS-1 is the oldest broadcast station in the Bahamas. It has a News/Talk format, and broadcasts on 1540 kHz and 104.5 MHz in Nassau, with a repeater in Freeport on 107.7 MHz. It is under ownership of the Broadcasting Corporation of The Bahamas. The AM station has a Class A clear-channel allocation under NARBA and its nighttime signal can be heard throughout the Bahamas, most of Cuba, and southeastern Florida.
The following radio stations broadcast on AM frequency 1540 kHz: 1540 AM is a United States clear-channel frequency. KXEL Waterloo, Iowa, and ZNS-1 Nassau, Bahamas, share Class A status on 1540 AM.
CaribVision is an international broadcast television channel that plays in the United States, the Caribbean and Canada. CaribVision is an internationally broadcast English-language television channel run by the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC)'s national broadcast centre on the island of Barbados. The main focus of the channel is Caribbean culture, news, current affairs, sports, lifestyle, opinions, and entertainment from an Anglophone Caribbean perspective.
Call signs in Canada are official identifiers issued to the country's radio and television stations. Assignments for broadcasting stations are made by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), while amateur stations receive their call signs from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. Conventional radio and television broadcasting stations assignments are generally three, four or five letters long and almost exclusively use "C" call signs; with a few exceptions noted below, the "V" calls are restricted to specialized uses such as amateur radio.
ZNS-2 is the second-oldest radio station in the Bahamas, having begun broadcasting in 1962 on the AM band at 1240 kHz with a power of 1 kW. At some unknown point in the 1990s, the station migrated to the FM band on 107.9 MHz. It is under ownership of the Broadcasting Corporation of The Bahamas.
ZNS-3-FM is a radio station in the Bahamas, having begun broadcasting as an FM repeater of ZNS-3, at the time the "Northern Service", before separating and adopting its current music format. It is under ownership of the Broadcasting Corporation of The Bahamas.
Picewell A. L. "Soca" Forbes is a Bahamian former Progressive Liberal Party politician and broadcaster who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Mangrove Cay and South Andros from 2007 to 2021.
