The Washington Post and Bonneville International have decided to scrap their three-year content partnership for radio station WTWP on 1500 AM and 107.7 FM. The station, which launched in March 2006, has been struggling with an audience share of less than 1.o% for most of its existence, though the latest survey showed an increase to 1.2%. But the station is reported to have made losses of about $2 million.
Washington Post Radio carried some content from RNW, and was our first commercial radio partner in the US. It will close next month, and the station’s call letters will change to WWWT, to be known on air as Talk Radio 3WT. Some of the personalities currently on the station will remain, and syndicated programming will be added. 3WT will debut on 1500 AM, 107.7 FM, and 820 AM in Frederick on 20 September.
- Why Washington Post Radio Died (Washington Post blog)
on Sep 3rd, 2007 at 07:58
I am sorry to see the demise of Washington Post Radio. I think they made a very crucial error. Although they carried content produced with the newspaper during the day, the evening was filled with syndicated talk. This was also true of much of the weekend. This meant that working people, especially those using the Internet were sometimes unable to get the most out of the service.
A similar happened with the now defunct Lifestyle Radio format of WCFL. I really enjoyed this format of news and features, but living 300 miles from Chicago, I rarely heard it. At night, when reception was often good here in Louisville, they had sports talk followed by Larry King. The format was soon dropped.
I think that many radio formats are killed by assumpions programmers make that may or may not be true.
Another example is that people over fifty are too loyal to brands to change. I don’t believe this is as true as it once was. People are living longer, and brands are in a constant state of change.