Today, Oct. 3rd, is the 40th anniversary of WCTL Radio. According to their website, wctl.org:

In 1967, 21 Christian businessmen and pastors committed themselves to bringing Christian radio to the Erie, PA area under the vision of George Smith, a local radio engineer. After looking at available new frequencies to apply to the FCC for, they found four-month old WBVB, a 250-watt FM station in Union City. The Inspiration Time board reached agreement to buy WBVB from owners William Baker and Virgil Brown for $17,500 payable over the next few years. With a down payment of $1,000, Inspiration Time became a 49% owner of WBVB. On October 3, 1967, George Smith took over the daily operation and management of WBVB. This date marks the beginning of what is known now as the WCTL radio ministry.

This radio station has played a significant part of my life for probably over 30 of the last 40 years. My earliest memories go back to the mid-1970’s when my brother-in-law, now Pastor Mike Watson (of Grace Baptist Church) had a 15-minute Christian rock radio show on WCTL called Street Level. That’s back in the day when the station was all block programming, and they stuck it in the afternoon right after “Tips for Teens.” Rev. Richard Frank was the General Manager back then, and Mike would record the show in his spare bedroom on reel-to-reel tape, and drive it down to Union City to the station’s trailer on Lincolnville Road. Eventually, the Street Level Radio Show went national, and was aired on over 50 secular Album Rock stations across the country. I used to play the weekly half hour right after my Counterpoint Radio show on Gannon’s WERG Sunday evenings while I was in school in the early 1980’s.

Even though I went to school for Communication Arts, I really didn’t have a desire to get into Christian broadcasting, which at the time professionally, left a lot to be desired. So I went on to be a Top 40 DJ, but still very much loving the contemporary Christian music I was raised on and played on my college station. In the middle 1980’s, dozens of Christian businessmen would have lunch together Fridays at the Mannechor Club downtown in a meeting called TGIF. One of the initiatives that came out of those discussions was the lack of a Christian music station in our area. Now WCTL had been plugging away for almost 20 years at that time, but the signal was week and the programming must not have met the felt need of those men. I’ll never forget when then manager Bill Baker and board chair Ron Fuhrman came to the lunch to talk about the station, basically saying “don’t abandon us, but join us.” It wouldn’t be too long for those businessmen to wait.

**Part Two-tomorrow

Note: this is the final day of the WCTL 40th Birthday Sharathon. I would encourage you that if you appreciate that the station is available for people to be encouraged in their lives, that you support it with a donation. You can do it online now.