Suburban DC (Leesburg, VA) now has another 50-kW station (1,300 watts-n) at 1190 kHz. Talker WAGE (which was on 1200) returned to the air 4/11 as WCRW AM 1190 after going dark more than a year ago. This time the programming is Asian, with includes entertainment news coming out of Pacific Rim countries, including China Radio International. It does have at least one competitor in Family Radio’s Korean WDCT-AM 1310.
The move to 1190 was made by shutting down WBIS-AM 1190 in Annapolis, MD on 12/30/10.
“We’re going to broadcast programming from a supplier in California that targets information, news and events in the Asian subcontinent,” WCRW president Alan Pendleton told The Loudoun Times. WCRW’s parent company is New World Radio’s a subsidiary of Potomac Radio. It has a sister foreign-language station in DC in WUST-AM.
Asian news will reach and intrigue an over-saturated Washington, D.C. market, he said. The Asian population has more than quadrupled in Loudoun during the past 10 years to 46,033, according to 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data.
WAGE Radio was Loudoun’s hometown station for more than 50 years before it was purchased by Potomac Radio in 2006. Three years later in August 2009, the station shuttered, but was projected to return to the air by 10/31. FCC issues stalled the radio station’s return for six months, Pendleton told the paper.
Loudon County’s planning staff and a local conservancy also gave some pushback to the station’s rebirth last year.
He added that WCRW will also air broadcast Amber alerts, Loudoun County news, traffic, weather, sports and events.
