February 26, 1991 was a fateful day in Twin Cities radio history and also an important one for kids like me who were in junior high at the time: It was the day 99.5 WLOL came to an end.
The story has been told over and over. Suffice it to say, Emmis Broadcasting’s money woes combined with Minnesota Public Radio’s desire for a second FM signal in Minneapolis meant the end of WLOL.
What I didn’t know as an eighth grader at Maple Grove Junior High was that the last version of WLOL’s format, a Minneapolis Sound-heavy combination of Dance, Hip-Hop, R&B, and Alternative, was a rarity at the time. It fit into the “Top 40/Dance” category that later became known as Rhythmic Top 40.
With apologies to live radio, here’s a Spotify playlist of 99 songs I remember (or at least I’m pretty sure I remember) from 99.5 WLOL:
What’s amazing is that the format I remember three decades later only lasted nine months. It launched in May 1990 when Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 album, recorded in Minneapolis, was halfway through an eight-song streak of hits. Prince’s Graffiti Bridge soundtrack, released months after the format launched, also got heavy airplay.
But it wouldn’t last. The sale to MPR was announced on the day after Christmas 1990 and the station changed hands exactly two months later. One of my classmates had the gall to wear a KDWB shirt the next day.
WLOL’s final days, recounting its ten-year history in the CHR format, are well-documented at RadioTapes.com.
WLOL’s airstaff ended up at a number of different stations. Longtime morning host John Hines went to K102 and later WCCO, afternoon jock Greg Thunder worked a number of different stations and now hosts mornings on 102.9 The Wolf, and evening host Alan Kabel eventually got a syndicated show.
WLOL allowed KDWB and K102 to buy ads urging listeners to change their dials, but KDWB’s version of the Top 40 format at the time was very different from WLOL. I was shocked a few months later to find that Casey’s Top 40 had somehow ended up on KS95:
The WLOL callsign moved up to Cambridge later in 1991, where the new WLOL briefly referred to itself as “105 1/2” before moving to 105.3. The callsign was later parked on 1470 in Brooklyn Park until it was revived for a Classic Hits format on 100.3. After that, the callsign went back its original home on AM 1330 with a Catholic format. Since 2008, WLOL-FM has been assigned to a small non-commercial FM station in Star City, West Virginia, owned by Light Of Life Community.
A 1990 Star Tribune article about the sale foreshadows a trend that would grow in the following decades, noting that it was rare (at the time) for a non-commercial operator to buy a commercial station. Such sales have surged in the last decade and came back to Minneapolis last year with the sale of the pair of “Go Radio” stations resulting in job losses, just like 30 years earlier.
1990-12-27 WLOL sold to MPR 1 Thu, Dec 27, 1990 – Page 1 · Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota) · Newspapers.com
1990-12-27 WLOL sold to MPR 2 Thu, Dec 27, 1990 – Page 13 · Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota) · Newspapers.com