CBS’ “All News 99.1” WNEW Bowie MD/Washington DC will expand its coverage to include Baltimore and the rest of Maryland between the Beltways.
The expansion will take place on Monday, March 3 at 5:00am. The Baltimore Sun reports that the move will entail adding Baltimore and Anne Arundel, Howard, Montgomery and Prince Georges Counties to the station’s traffic reports and the opening of a seven person news bureau based at sister WJZ-TV Baltimore and one reporter at the Maryland State Capital in Annapolis. WNEW will also include staffers from Adult CHR “Mix 106.5” WWMX and Sports “105.7 The Fan” WJZ-FM.
WNEW has struggled to gain a foothold in the Washington market since launching in January 2012. The station has held steady with a 0.8 share in the last three PPM monthlies, well behind Hubbard’s market leading 103.5 WTOP’s 9.2 share. Part of the issue is the signal being centrally located between the Baltimore and Washington markets. As CBS Washington VP/Market Manager tells the Sun WNEW “only reaches 38 percent of the DC metro population while it covers more than 75 percent of the Baltimore metro.”
The station served both markets during its long run as Alternative WHFS before flipping to a Washington focused Spanish format in 2005.
It’s not quite Mon. 5AM yet, but WNEW has already made quite a few changes. They are no longer calling themselves Washington’s news station, instead using the more generic “You give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world”. Traffic is now referred to on-air as “Beltway-to-Beltway”, although they also cover 95 north of the Baltimore Beltway and south of the Washington Beltway. Sports reports direct people to 105.7 and 106.7 for more, instead of just 106.7. The station has also been added to 105.7 HD2 in Baltimore (it was already on 94.7 HD2 in DC).
This seems like a solid move to me. 99.1 has always had better Baltimore coverage and there is a format hole for all-news in Baltimore. Though I prefer WNEW to WTOP, there was no way the new challenger was going to gain ground in the DC market. WTOP has the signals to cover the extreme commuters who are a captive audience for hours in the car every day. WNEW does not. As long as that remains the case, WNEW will struggle in DC. Also, the difference in presentation between the stations creates a TSL discrepancy: The more laid-back presentation on WTOP favors the listener who will tune in for a long period of time (“long” for a news station, at least). The more concise and repetitive presentation on WNEW favors the listener who just wants a quick traffic report before they go back to a music station.
In the wee hours of this morning (March 3rd), a major winter storm began pounding the Baltimore-to-Washington corridor, so WNEW-99.1’s move to give more attention to Baltimore might not have come at a better time.
normally i’d have a lot to say on the matter, but previous commenters couldn’t have done better. I honestly think the baltimore CBS cluster is the most creative at leveraging their brands, and the personalities they use for brand building.