Changes
Around the same time as the sale to NEP, WAGM began phasing out its secondary affiliations with ABC and NBC. Given increasing availability of cable and satellite television in rural Aroostook County, the necessity to carry programming from multiple networks decreased. Many stations over the Canadian border in New Brunswick also serve Aroostook County. By 1990, WAGM carried the entire CBS prime time lineup, with other network programs airing nightly between 7 and 8. The station dropped ABC completely in 1998, while the last NBC show seen on the station, Days of Our Lives, disappeared from the schedule in September 2005. The end of the ABC and NBC affiliations left KXGN-TV in Glendive, Montana, as the last television station in the United States affiliated with more than one big three network on a single feed (that station, formerly a dual CBS/NBC affiliate, moved NBC to a digital subchannel in September 2009). Today, WVII-TV from Bangor serves as the de facto ABC affiliate on Charter Spectrum's Presque Isle system; until the launch of WWPI-LD in 2020, WLBZ served the same function for NBC.
When Fox gained broadcasting rights to games from the NFL's National Football Conference in 1994, WAGM aired them since Fox did not have an affiliate in Presque Isle; this made it the only station in the United States to air programs from all four major networks at the same time.[14] The arrangement ended when CBS obtained the American Football Conference contract in 1998; as a result, Fox programming was provided to the Presque Isle area via Foxnet, and it remained that way until September 2006. WAGM also aired some UPN programming during late nights and weekends from 1995 until 2006 when that network closed and merged with The WB to form The CW.
The station moved its transmitter site in 1999 to the summit of Big Rock ski resort on Mars Hill Mountain's southwestern face. The move placed the antenna at a much higher point greatly improving reception of the signal.[15] This location is where its first digital signal on UHF channel 16 signed on from in July 2003.[16] This conflicts with an official statement made in 2006 by WAGM,[17] which stated it launched its digital signal in April 2002.[18] For the U.S. digital transition on June 12, 2009, WAGM applied for a 10 kilowatt digital signal and moved its transmitter to the northern section of Mars Hill Mountain. At midnight on June 12, it signed off the analog channel 8 and digital channel 16 signals for the final time. The next day, the station signed on a new, more powerful digital signal on channel 8.
WAGM is seen across Western New Brunswick in Canada and can be picked up over-the-air a few miles outside of Fredericton city limits in communities such as Keswick Ridge. On cable, it was seen throughout Northwestern New Brunswick towns such as Woodstock, Grand Falls, and Edmundston, until Rogers Cable dropped the channel on May 15, 2025.[19] The station was available to a greater extent in Canada such as in Fredericton until the advent of satellite-delivered American broadcast stations on Cancom in the early-1990s.
