Leesburg's WAGE Suspends Operations

  Tough economic conditions have claimed another area media outlet, as Loudoun County’s only radio station – AM 1200 WAGE – shut down this morning. If you tune to the frequency on the AM dial, you’ll now only hear dead air.
  WAGE management indicated this is only a temporary suspension, as they are continuing their plans to make the station into a 50,000-watt regional station that can be heard throughout the Washington D.C. metro area. In its current form, WAGE was only a 5,000-watt station during the day, and dropped down to 1,000 watts after sundown, meaning you could hear it clearly in Loudoun and parts of Fairfax during the day. At night, the signal faded significantly once you left Leesburg and hit Ashburn.
  WAGE’s owners – New World Radio – purchased the station in late 2005, and it was never a secret their goals were to power the station up to 50,000 watts to go after advertisers outside of the Loudoun borders. Getting the regulatory approval to build a tower in a place that would allow the signal at 50K to be heard throughout downtown D.C., however, turned into a much longer and difficult process than originally thought, as original management projections had the station up and running at that signal strength by the end of 2006.
  That didn’t happen, and in spring of 2007, ownership decided to veer away from the live and local approach the station was using. They dismissed the majority of the staff and went with all syndicated programming, except for one-minute local news, traffic and weather updates in the morning drive time. While costs dropped, so did ad revenues over the next year, although they did remain strong when WAGE carried sports such as Virginia Tech, the Washington Redskins, the Nationals and the Wizards.
  But the economic recession that has crushed several local newspapers wiped even those areas away for WAGE. Several times in May, when I was taking my daughter to school, I’d turn on WAGE at 7 a.m. and see how long I’d go before hearing a local ad. Several times, I only heard one. Twice, I didn’t hear any. You can’t survive in any business with no local advertising in your morning drive time.
  The decision marks the close of a Loudoun institution, as even if and when the station comes back on the air, it probably won’t be focused on local events in Loudoun. New World’s owners have been successful in brokered business programming, and brokered foreign language programming, and saw first-hand how small the local advertising pie is in Loudoun. I seriously doubt they will try the same approach again.
  Whatever they do, they will have to do something that attracts more regional and national advertisers to make the station viable. They will also have to get ratings, as previously, they weren’t considered part of the DC market. That means if and when they do come back, they will be listed in the Arbitron/PPM ratings – a great help if they reach demographic listener targets, but a huge albatross if they come in 33rd with a 0.1 rating.
  They’ll also face competition in sports if they try to go back to carrying the Redskins, Nationals, Wizards and Virginia Tech. For years, WAGE was the only area station that carried the Hokies, but WTEM now also airs their games. The Wizards recently made WJFK their flagship station, and the new sports-talk station will undoubtedly go after the Nationals next season. A 5,000-watt station in Leesburg carrying Redskins games wasn’t previously a problem for Dan Snyder’s WTEM, but I’m guessing a 50,000-watt station would be. So none of these sports franchises may be available when they return to the air.
  WAGE will be missed. For a lot of us over the years, waking up to a driveway full of snow meant tuning to WAGE to find out about school closings and other schedule changes. It gave a lot of area broadcasters their start. Until its last year, WAGE made a difference in Loudoun.
  We'll have to wait and see what the new WAGE brings. The target date for the new, higher-powered station to return to the airways is mid-2010.