Forum:Federal States/Broadcast Station Branding

Forums → Federal States → Federal States/Broadcast Station Branding

Hello all, I'd like to get this discussion pushed through the forums ahead of the omnibus happening soon. The main idea floating around is that the FSA would have its radio stations preceded with O (with stations such as OMLN or ODIU). This would have evolved from an old naval identification signal as a circle turning into a radio code as a circle followed by 3 letters, and the circle later turning into the letter O (credit for this idea goes to Aces California). I hope we're able to make this canon, so that we can tag radio stations accordingly on the OGF map. PoisonDog522 (talk) 04:31, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the proposal. I would further like to propose that this be extended to television stations and that we vote on this in conjunction with the next omnibus. We'll need a couple weeks of discussion to see if there are objections from within the FSA community, but this is certainly reasonable if we open that window now. As for the proposal at hand, I like Aces's idea very, very much. From an administrative perspective, this works well and is adaptive to however international call signs would develop (either introduce shapes, revert to letters and grant the FSA the 'O' block, or find other workarounds. Of course, branding by call sign is a very American phenomenon with only rare exceptions elsewhere, so it has meaning in this project that makes this step useful. — Alessa _(talk) 14:37, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for putting this proposal up PD. I'd just want to expound on the concept I introduced that you and Alessa mentioned, just so that can be factored into any conversation about this, perhaps spur different iterations of the same concept.

I think Pole explained that in reality the US uses W and K for broadcast signifiers and contemporarily as branding as they were used in Naval Communications (I presume Morse-Code) in the Atlantic and Pacific (respectively I presume). Knowing we should steer away from using anything extremely similar as using W and K, I proposed we take the Naval Communication origins idea even further back to using Maritime Signal Flags, in which Federal State Ships (in whatever message they were getting across) used a shape on a flag for broadcasting. I used the example of using a circle for initial branding purposes (e.g. stations being called Circle-XXX firstly), and the idea that it was co-opted for later as a O instead was evolved from later discussions.

I can understand and support the idea of using O / Circle for Broadcast Station Branding, but I hope the explanation of the context I propose can lead to further conversation with different ideas. For example arguably a Triangle could be co-opted into being an A. Two Triangles AA or M. --Aces California (talk) 16:11, 25 July 2026 (UTC)