{"id":12991,"date":"2021-05-05T10:00:20","date_gmt":"2021-05-05T15:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=12991"},"modified":"2021-05-04T12:03:54","modified_gmt":"2021-05-04T17:03:54","slug":"license-plate-letters-kma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2021\/05\/license-plate-letters-kma\/","title":{"rendered":"License Plate Letters \u2014 KMA"},"content":{"rendered":"

KMA 960 AM<\/a> is one of Iowa’s oldest radio stations. Its call letters, chosen specifically by the May Seed & Nursery Co., mean “Keep Millions Advised.” The May family owned the station from its beginning in 1925 until 2019<\/a>. Here is a book from 1985<\/a> (large PDF) chronicling the station’s first 60 years.<\/p>\n

KMA is one of the few three-letter K stations<\/a> remaining east of the Rockies. The codes had been “assigned to the Merchant Fleet of War Vessels during the late World War,” said the April 30, 1925, Clarinda Herald<\/em>.\u00a0Two in Pennsylvania have weird histories and one of those may have been an accident.<\/p>\n

KMA’s letters came after the K\/W line was moved to the Mississippi River, but before 1930 while stations were still able to apply for both three-letter and personalized call letters.<\/p>\n

(The K\/W switch in early 1923<\/a> grandfathered in such well-known Iowa stations as WOI and WOC. WMT came in slightly later as a change from WJAM, which started in 1922. However, from what I can gather, the only<\/em> way WHO could have gotten those letters on April 15, 1924, is by request, contradictory to its Wikipedia page. The only other three-letter W that month went to Sears Roebuck \u2014 the\u00a0W<\/strong>orld’s L<\/strong>argest S<\/strong>tore.)<\/p>\n

The Early Radio History website<\/a>, nearly 25 years old, is a treasure trove of information about early radio. Its creator painstakingly has dug up a lot of history.<\/p>\n

There was another three-letter K station owned by a seed company a few miles down the road from KMA. That’ll be covered in a future post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KMA 960 AM is one of Iowa’s oldest radio stations. Its call letters, chosen specifically by the May Seed & Nursery Co., mean “Keep Millions Advised.” The May family owned the station from its beginning in 1925 until 2019. Here … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[18,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iowa-miscellaneous","category-license-plates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12991"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12996,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12991\/revisions\/12996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}