Remembering My Time on College Radio

Before I was filling wedding dance floors every weekend, I was filling the airwaves at Bowling Green State University — back when queuing vinyl, splicing reel-to-reel, and shouting “WFAL!” into a mic felt like the height of cool. Campus radio may have changed its name, but the memories (and the chaos) are still loud and clear. 

Years before Mostov DJ Services existed, I was learning the fundamentals of music programming, segues, and audience engagement behind the microphone at WFAL in Bowling Green.

October 2, 2025

I was reading an article this afternoon about Falcon Radio at Bowling Green State University when I learned something that genuinely surprised me: the station had officially abandoned the WFAL call letters. I wasn't quite sure how to feel about that. For four years, those letters were part of my identity. Every commercial break ended the same way: "You're listening to Rock Solid, WFAL." Before I spent my weekends filling wedding dance floors, I spent my college years filling the airwaves.

There have been two radio stations on the BGSU campus since the late 1960s but the lines between the two have often been blurred. The better known (and better funded) station has always been WBGU. Its home on the radio dial remains 88.1 FM. And while the WBGU call letters have endured in Northwest Ohio (and online), the WFAL call letters have left the 419 permanently. 

The January 18, 1948 edition of the Bee Gee News (yes, that’s what the school newspaper was called then) announced – Campus ‘Radio Station’ Opens Tonight. The birth of WBGU, right? Well, sort of. When the station first went on air, it was known as WRS and Professor Sidney Stone of the speech department let the campus know they could access programming “at 600 kilocycles from 5 to 7 p.m.” Apparently, it ran through wiring in university buildings. I was today years old when I learned these details about the station's birth.  Just a few years later, the March 30, 1951 edition of the school newspaper announced that as soon as a new station was constructed, WBGU would launch on 88.1 FM, which happened just a year later. 

The 1960s were a time of change, and campus radio was no different. In the latter part of the decade, undergraduate students at WBGU were replaced by three paid employees. This, in turn, led to the birth of WFAL. While WBGU-FM moved toward “an era of professionalism that raised the prominence of the station in the community” (according to the WBGU training manual), WFAL had its origins as a pirate radio station in a BGSU dorm room. The student DJs who were ousted by the university's decision to hire professionals were determined to keep the vinyl spinning one way or another. Remarkably, instead of shutting down the pirate station, the university soon decided to make the illegal broadcast a school-sponsored station and "WFAL" officially began broadcasting in 1970. 

By the mid-1970s, both stations were again student-run, and when classes ended in spring 1985, WBGU signed off for the last time from South Hall.  Trivia – “See Me, Feel Me” by The Who was the last record played. 

As for WFAL, an article in the 1987 Key yearbook attributes WFAL programming director Dale Stead as saying the station was in its 16th year and the largest AOR (album-oriented rock) station in the Midwest. This is how I remember WFAL. For those who do not know, AOR format allowed for obscure tracks to be played by DJ discretion. These "deep tracks" (as they were sometimes called) were often preferred to those songs released commercially as singles. WBGU was an alternative station; WFAL was strictly classic rock...until it wasn't. 

During my time at the station—from 1991 through 1995—the production manager decided we needed to fall in line with broader industry trends. Soon, we had modern rock tracks on hourly rotation. We were still free to play the songs we loved, but our personal selections often had to wait until we satisfied the promotional obligations that kept money flowing into the station. The result was often jarring. Boston did not play particularly well with Big Audio Dynamite. Aerosmith rarely felt at home beside Juliana Hatfield. It was during this period that I began to understand something that still shapes the way I DJ weddings today: songs do not exist in isolation. The transition between songs matters. Tempo matters. Key signature matters. Genre matters. A great music set is not merely a collection of good songs; it is a collection of songs that make sense together. Long before I ever stood behind a wedding DJ booth, WFAL was quietly teaching me how to guide listeners from one musical moment to the next.

When I worked as a DJ at WFAL, we still queued vinyl, recorded promotions on reel-to-reel, and played commercials and PSAs using a cart system. A few short years after I graduated, big changes followed. Both stations moved to the new, state-of-the-art Kuhlin Center on campus, and when this happened,  both radio stations took on new identities. 

Today, WBGU-FM is “Northwest Ohio’s Community Radio Station,” and it is staffed by community volunteers and students alike.  Anchored by The Morning Show presented by the Bowling Green Chamber of Commerce, WBGU is focused on the local Wood County community and offers a diverse range of programming including local news, sports, and niche music shows.  Falcon Radio (formally WFAL) is now exclusively streaming online on the BG Falcon Media website. It is now a sandbox of sorts, exclusively for students.  On Falcon Radio students can feel free to experiment with any type of programming they wish while they learn how to operate the state-of-the-art studio equipment.  Students from any discipline are encouraged to participate and can often get trained and scheduled for their own show in twenty minutes or less.  Often the student produced content takes shape as podcasts, but Falcon Radio also has monthly music programming events sponsored by local businesses in addition to daily “legacy programs” that run at specific times each day.

Concerning the loss of the station's call letters, I am shocked to learn that Bowling Green State University never had the right to use WFAL. As School of Media and Communication Chief Broadcast Engineer & Manager of Technology Services Jim Barnes points out, call letters are actually licensed through the FCC. And BGSU never had that license. The WFAL call letters have been owned by stations in Mashpee, Mass., Falmouth, Va., and Frostproof, Fla. An FM station in Milner, Ga. currently uses WFAL. So to protect themselves, when the time came to move into the shiny new Kuhlin Center digs, WFAL disappeared from the BG landscape and Falcon Radio was born.

I treasure my memories of WFAL, both on and off the air. The station would occasionally send DJs to remote locations to provide music for live audiences, and those excursions became my introduction to mobile DJing. Looking back, I can draw a straight line from those early remotes to the business I operate today. I was bitten by the bug almost immediately. There was something magical about stepping out of the studio, watching people react to the music in real time, and realizing that a well-chosen song could change the energy of an entire room. More than thirty years later, that feeling has never gone away.

I don't think I would enjoy work as a radio DJ today. Radio has become too corporate, and most stations pre-record their DJs. What's more, those DJs no longer have authority to choose what songs get played. The playlists are now decided by algorithms. As a mobile DJ, I always play my couples' song requests, but I am still free to "read the room." I still have the ability to choose what songs to play. And for as long as that is allowed, I will happily work every Saturday night. There really is nothing better than bringing crowds of strangers to the dance floor and uniting them as a community of celebrants. 

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