By Mary Cipriani, Guest Editorial Writer
TL/DR: it’s the same old sad story we’ve seen before in the college radio community – budget pressures on a university, predatory behavior by an NPR affiliate, staff blindsided with no warning and no transition plans, and a community grieves the loss of a beloved radio station.
There’s been a lot written in local news and discussed online about the situation at WCSB Cleveland State University. We bring you the story of what has transpired so far in order to bring awareness to other stations facing similar challenges. Our guest editorial writer is Mary Cipriani, a 1984 alumni of WJCU John Carroll University.
On Friday October 3, 2025, on College Radio Day, a 49-year-old college radio institution in Cleveland Ohio came to an end when Cleveland State University (CSU) announced the approval of public service operating agreement with Ideastream Public Media to take over the programming of WCSB 89.3fm under their JazzNEO format.
WCSB staff was given less than 24-hour notice to attend a zoom meeting at 11:30 am that morning, and by the time the call was over a mere 13 minutes later, with no opportunity to ask questions, the signal cutover had already happened and the station began broadcasting jazz music. The staffers on site at the WCSB studios were met with campus police to escort them out of the station.
The station will retain its WCSB call letters, and CSU will retain the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) license for the station. Contractual terms were not disclosed but in press releases and interviews university officials stated that “Ideastream will take over financial responsibility for the operations and programming of the station from Cleveland State, with no other payments being exchanged between the two entities.”
Like many colleges, CSU has faced declining enrollment and has had to reduce programs and staff to address multi-million dollar revenue shortfalls. Multiple student organizations have been eliminated or consolidated. This past month also saw cuts to three NCAA sports programs and elimination and suspension of multiple academic programs.
The WCSB student staff had some suspicions that information was being withheld from them. They were frustrated by the lack of responsiveness from CSU’s Center for Campus Engagement (which is responsible for supporting all student organizations including WCSB) regarding the release of their operating funds and scholarship paperwork – but they never imagined that the reason was that the university had been actively planning for several months to hand the keys over to Ideastream.
The WCSB student organization had over 100 students and volunteers with an annual budget averaging $62,000 a year from the university which primarily covered general operating costs such as utilities, paid internships for six students, and part-time salary of the station engineer. WCSB raised an average of an additional $40,000 annually during its most recent radiothons, and this community funding covered all other station expenses and special events such their popular annual Halloween Ball concert.
CSU President Dr. Laura Bloomberg stated that Ideastream approached them about taking over the programming for WCSB and said “This was not made for budgetary or financial reasons” calling it ‘cost neutral’ for the university and reiterating that no cash changed hands between Ideastream and CSU as part of this deal. WCSB was kept in the dark, citing an NDA, and CSU emphasized that the motivation for pursuing this partnership was to provide students with professional and internship opportunities at Ideastream. So far, no details have been released regarding the type or specific number of annual internships that will be made available to CSU students. Signal Cleveland broke a story on October 15 that as part of this agreement, CSU will receive 1000 underwriting spots across three of Ideastream’s radio and TV stations and that Bloomberg will receive a seat on Ideastream’s Board Of Trustees.
Daniel Lenhart, who was employed at CSU’s Center for Campus Engagement where he had operational responsibility for the radio station, strongly disagrees with CSUs assertions that this wasn’t done for financial reasons. “Before I retired, I created a packet of information for whomever was going to take my place…Information about yearly renewals like the website hosting and streaming, required FCC filings, equipment needs and upgrades that were planned, student leader scholarships, budgetary information, and contact information for all the different needs of the station. Of course, CSU wasn’t going to hire a new person to replace me since they cut my position due to budgetary reasons. That left CSU with the radio station and nobody (at CCE) to manage its operations. Along comes Ideastream with an offer so of course the university jumped on it. Plus, they get to keep the license and can sell it later if they want to.”
Lenhart also challenges the assumption that the already overburdened faculty in the School of Communication will do the work needed to manage any of the new Ideastream internships. “They’re the ones that said no to taking on the responsibilities of the station operations because they didn’t have the manpower to do it. Suddenly they’re going to have that manpower to work with all the students doing internships at Ideastream? I highly doubt it.”
Ideastream operates multiple public television and radio stations in Northeast Ohio, including WVIZ (PBS television affiliate), classical music station WCLV, WKSU (NPR affiliate), ideastream.org and management of The Ohio Channel and Statehouse News Bureau on behalf of all Ohio’s public broadcasting stations. With this new relationship, WCSB’s terrestrial FM broadcast reach gives Ideastream additional signal coverage in NE Ohio which now allows them to offer JazzNEO programming, where recently it was only available via streaming and HD radio.
In 2021, Kent State University’s NPR affiliated station, WKSU, entered a similar public service operating agreement, with Ideastream Public Media taking over responsibility for the on-air programming of WKSU while the university retained the FCC license. A family of six repeater FM stations carry WKSU’s NPR syndicated programs which are heard throughout NE Ohio. Since the PSOA began, there have been approximately 100 interns who have worked at WKSU.
CSU and Ideastream are touting the internships that will be available to CSU students but these are not equivalent to the experiential value of what had previously been available to over 40 students engaged in on-air programming at WCSB when this latest school year began. Bloomberg expressed hope that the WCSB student organization, having renamed themselves XCSB, can decide how they want to move forward, suggesting podcasts or other new media content tools as a possible alternative.
As College Broadcasters Inc (CBI) noted in a recent editorial posted to LinkedIn:
“A student who operated an FCC-licensed radio station has demonstrable experience. A student who made podcasts competes with millions recording in their bedrooms. Hiring managers in radio and broadcast journalism know the difference.”
The skills that students learn by producing and hosting their own radio show, and the behind-the-scenes management of operating a college radio station equally apply to students who aren’t pursuing careers in the broadcasting or media industry – experiential learning that simply cannot be replicate in an internship environment where they have no on-air opportunities.
In a webcast chat with Ideastream on October 14, XCSB Station Manager Alison Bomgardner shared “I’m a Political Science and Spanish major…We have accounting, nursing, biology majors, and everyone across the board gets a chance because WCSB existed. We prided ourselves on giving students on-air opportunities to find their own way of expressing themselves without format, without limitations, giving them a chance to figure out who they are, not just as a student at a university but as a young person trying to find their own voice.”
Former general manager at WCSB, Lawrence Daniel Caswell questioned the value of the internships being offered at Ideastream. “I didn’t go to Cleveland State to study broadcasting; I was a physics major. It was the first leadership I was able to do as a manager, looking at the budget for the organization, managing contractors. It was first collaborative community I was part of, a multi-generational, multi-ethnic, cross-class community, who were all focused on a single mission of providing services to our communities that they could not get otherwise. I learned so much about my city, about myself, so much that I’m still utilizing today…it’s a straight line from what I did at WCSB to what I do today. I’m not just upset that it’s gone but upset that other students don’t have the opportunity to enter into that kind of community and learn what I learned.”
This sentiment is shared by John Carroll University’s WJCU general manager Jasen Sokol: “We’re seeing the numbers of students that want to be involved with the station going way up. I’ve got a waiting list for the radio class that goes into spring semester at this point. Students see it as a place to belong on campus, a place where they can create content and have a voice. For some students it’s professional preparation, but even the ones who don’t want to go into a broadcast or media field or content creation, are still learning life skills that they’ll put to use in any job. One of our hosts who recently got hired in the IT field shared that being on the air is what helped him get the job – because they saw that he was creative, was able to think on his feet, and speak clearly, and communicate effectively. With college radio, you get an authentic experience. It’s real. You know, you’re playing things live, you’re taking chances, some of the things you do or say or play, you might fall flat on your face, and that’s okay. And that’s all part of the college radio experience.”
Ideastream’s studios are located in the Idea Center Building (which also houses Playhouse Square’s arts education programs) near the CSU campus. As noted in a CSU press release, this will allow those internships to “….be at a convenient and accessible location from our campus”. There are other existing relationships between the university and Ideastream, notably the CSU School of Film and Media Arts being housed in the Ideastream studios. Students in that academic program are already participating in internships such as marketing and graphics design at Ideastream, so it’s hard to believe that acquiring programming control of WCSB’s FM signal has any valid connection to the continuation of internships under those other unrelated academic programs. Will CSU students who are Communications majors will now be given priority over those in the School Of Film? Will CSU students will be given preferential treatment over students from other area universities who are seeking internships at Ideastream?
A separate recent press release by Ideastream gained new scrutiny once the partnership with CSU became public. On September 24, Ideastream announced that Cleveland philanthropists and jazz aficionados, Char and Chuck Fowler, made a $1m donation to Ideastream to “support the build and equipping of a dedicated studio for JazzNEO within the Idea Center building”, and that the studio will be named in their honor.
Yvette Cook Darby, Ideastream’s chief marketing officer, clarified “That gift played no role whatsoever in the implementation of this agreement. Two totally separate transactions.”
John Gorman, former program director of Cleveland’s legendary FM rock station WMMS, and more recently at online oWow Radio, says “The numbers make no sense. We ran our entire business (oWow) from 2015 to 2020 for well under $300,000/year, and that includes building new studios, leasing office space and paying professional salaries. A million dollars JUST to ‘build a studio for JazzNEO’ is absurd, especially given that they already have unused studios at Ideastream.”
John Gorman dismissed the idea that there is any unmet need in NE Ohio for more jazz programming. While evaluating what possible new genres to add into oWow’s mix, Gorman states “We did an extensive market research study and jazz didn’t even show up in the Top 10 except as part of a format that would have also included R&B, soul and blues, with artists such as John Coltrane, Rashaan Roland Kirk and Billy Cobham, but certainly not the JazzNEO format.”
Ideastream’s Martin cites community surveys done that confirmed their jazz audience prefers to listen to music programming on terrestrial radio. At least one wealthy couple now conveniently has that personal wish fulfilled, surely they could’ve afforded to buy themselves a Spotify Premium subscription to listen to jazz 24/7. One also wonders if Ideastream’s survey was truly objective or just a self-serving exercise to justify the result they wanted to hear – like surveying kindergartners if they want candy for dinner. Did they survey heavy metal fans of college radio, did they survey Cleveland’s ethnic communities, or did they choose to conveniently ignore all voices other than their patrons. Unless all the financials and contractual details are made public we can only speculate, and given the Ideastream’s historical opaqueness, it’s doubtful the public will know if or how the Fowler’s generous gift to Ideastream enabled or motivated Ideastream to continue its expansionist takeover of local media.
So why was Ideastream so keen on acquiring the right to program WCSB’s FM signal? It’s likely simply because virtually every household has access to an FM receiver, but only a small number of people have compatible HD receivers in their cars and homes. And that’s the same reason why having CSU or Ideastream upgrade the equipment to allow XCSB to move to an HD channel isn’t really an ideal solution either – the listeners simply aren’t there. Jazz certainly is an important American art form but no more or less worthy than the wide variety of other voices that were heard on WCSB including blues, folk, heavy metal, punk, dance music, and ethnic and public service programming. Between WCSB, WBWC, WJCU and WRUW there already was over 20 hours a week of jazz music found on the left end of the dial, and which covered far more adventurous subgenres of jazz than is found on JazzNEO. It’s ludicrous to believe that there was some great unfulfilled demand for more jazz music. And it’s arrogant to believe that jazz or any other personal favorite, is any more deserving of the public’s non-commercial FM airwaves than any other genre of music. Is it worth elevating one single voice at the cost of all others in the community?
Many students and community members were also rightfully angered by the unprofessional and callous manner in which this announcement was handled. CSU and Ideastream’s self-inflicted black-eye have been noted in much of the local media reporting on the story, but neither one has offered any public apologies or acknowledgement that the rollout was handled poorly. It seems that a little humility and truth and reconciliation is in order. In any higher learning institution, those in positions of leadership are expected to lead by example with behavior worth emulating by your students. It was insulting and disrespectful to announce such a monumental change via a Zoom call instead of face-to-face, not taking any questions during that brief initial staff meeting, then having campus police kick students out for ‘trespassing’ in their own campus organization, and – unfathomably – choosing to announce this change on World College Radio Day on October 3rd. The contractual timing may likely have been an unfortunate coincidence but what kind of organization executes any type of legal agreement without thorough vetting and research? The significance of the October 3rd date would have been immediately and glaringly obvious to Martin and Bloomberg if they or their staffs had simply bothered to visit WCSB’s website which had a feature story on the homepage regarding the College Radio Foundation. Was one click too much effort to expect of them? WCSB received a $2000 grant from the College Radio Foundation a few years ago to help upgrade their antenna, a capital equipment improvement that Ideastream now gets to benefit from.
Obviously, CEOs are paid handsomely to execute strategy and drive growth for their own organizations, and this focus is evident in recent comments by both Martin “We prioritized finding a station that fits the needs of our audience” (our emphasis), and Bloomberg “I believe it’s a very positive thing for CSU” (our emphasis). No where to be found in all the press coverage over the past few weeks is any discussion or prioritization about what would be considered a win for WCSB or for its audience. XCSB is not just another student organization and ‘public media’ isn’t just what Ideastream decides what’s included in that definition.
It’s also notable that neither Bloomberg or Martin are from the Cleveland area – and we’ve learned this past week that Martin doesn’t even live in Cleveland, instead regularly commuting from the west coast. It’s clear from their actions and recent statements that both have a shocking lack of awareness or appreciation about the local history and impact of WCSBs diverse programming and it’s reach and importance in the local music and arts community in Cleveland.
How does tax-exempt Ideastream and a tax-exempt public university support the entire Cleveland arts community when local working musicians no longer have a local music show for in-studio appearances at WCSB? It also creates additional financial stress for local tax-paying live music venues and tax-paying independent record stores who regularly cross promoted events with WCSB. For each unique genre of programming targeted to each unique community, there exists an entire local ecosystem surrounding it – you have local blues musicians performing at the local blues nightclubs and local indie record stores selling the blues records that are played by the blues DJs on the college stations. This may have been a win-win for Ideastream and CSU but it’s a loss to the students, a loss to the local music and arts scene, and a loss of diverse community voices and comes at the expense of these local small businesses.
This change in programming is especially painful for the community volunteers, some of whom have hosted their ethnic programs for decades. Each of the college stations in Cleveland carry a wide variety of ethnic programming with trusted locally produced content by local voices, and these shows help them fulfill their FCC requirements for educational community service programming. WCSB offered weekly programs for Arabic, Congolese, East Asian, German, Hispanic, Hungarian, Irish, Latin, Polish and Slovenian audiences. These listeners tend to be older, and like fans of jazz, are primarily FM driven and typically does not engage in streaming or use an HD receiver. Time and again this set of programming has proven to be among the most generous supporters during annual radiothons because those programs aren’t available anywhere else on the FM dial. Purely from a fundraising point of view, it’s incredibly shortsighted of Ideastream not to recognize the donor overlap of those that enjoy PBS and NPR programming and those that listen to all genres of music on college radio. Why would you choose to anger your potential donors and cause many others to cancel their recurring pledges, at a time when you’re facing federal budget cuts?
Posted on Bluesky, October 1st, 2025
There have been multiple radio mergers and acquisitions over the years that encompass Ideastream’s portfolio. Under the reorganization that merged Ideastream and Kent States’ NPR station WKSU, another station in Ideastream’s group – WCPN 90.3 – lost it’s ethnic programming as a result. WCPN eliminated the entire 12-hour block of weekend ethnic programming (Hungarian, Slovenian, Ukrainian, German, Slovak, Czech, Lithuanian, British, Serbian, Spanish, Italian and Jewish), which resulted in a lawsuit brought by the Association of Nationalities Broadcasters. Several of those shows ended up migrating to WCSB WRUW and WJCU in the late 1980s.
After beginning its public service operating agreement with WKSU four years ago, Ideastream once again eliminated nationalities programs from that FM channel, replacing WKSUs shows with primarily NPR syndicated programming. Currently only three ethnic shows run on Ideastream’s HD4 channel – one hour each of Hungarian, Polish and Latino programming. Ideastream has stated they’re looking into adding three nationalities programs from WCSB to their HD lineup, but that still results in the elimination of seven other ethnic shows and cuts the chosen three from typically two hours of airtime (on WCSB) to one hour on Ideastream, and placing them on the HD radio band instead of FM. That’s better than nothing, but why is Ideastream unwilling to serve the Cleveland audience for nationalities programming? It’s dismissive to think that the other area college stations, who already have a full slate of programming, can simply pick up all of these orphaned programs.
Long time XCSB community volunteer Walter Mahovlich, commented “None of the ethnic DJs have heard anything. I had the Hungarian hour and we have been offered nothing. I haven’t even been told when or if I can get my personal record collection back. WCSB has been very good to us over the years and treated us as full and equal partners unlike WCPN and WKSU. Several of our shows were established at WCSB when WCPN locked out the ethnic DJs in 1988.”
XCSB’s Elizabeth Papp-Taylor added: “It’s a devasting loss to Cleveland’s ethnic communities. Every nationality should have an option to have their voices heard and it needs to be on the FM dial. Streaming is also important as we have a lot of listeners in other states and even internationally, and we have many listeners who replay the show archives later in the week. The Nobel Prize in Literature was recently won by a Hungarian author, László Krasznahorkai. I was confident he’d win so I prepared an entire show around this major news event for our community, and I wasn’t able to air it, we weren’t able to celebrate with our audience.”
WJCU’s Jasen Sokol adds: “The audiences for those ethnic shows are niche, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not important, and that’s what college radio is supposed to be there for – to provide a voice to underrepresented communities. In fact, in the last couple of years, we’ve added even more nationalities shows – at the request of students! So now we’ve got a student-run Irish show and a student-run French show. We have a significant number of French exchange students on our campus, so we have two hours every Wednesday night where we play all French music.”
This is the third time in the Cleveland radio market that Ideastream has eliminated ethnic programming from its FM airwaves. Much of Ideastream’s radio broadcast day consists of syndicated content produced in Chicago and elsewhere. It’s a hard to convince Clevelanders that you’re serving the local community by airing prerecorded content that’s not even produced in our area, and it’s being managed by a CEO who doesn’t even live in our local community.
It strikes many as hypocritical for Ideastream to claim to support diversity and underserved communities while simultaneously killing a long-established cultural resource. The general assumption used to be that we’re all on the same non-profit educational team with a passion for community service, but Ideastream’s predatorial behavior feels like a deep betrayal of its professed values. FM broadcast airspace is a limited resource, and many low power and non-commercial stations across the country are being targeted by NPR affiliates as it’s the only way for them to grow their reach. CSU is the third US university in the past month to terminate student broadcasting.
It’s always sad when any community loses a local radio voice, such as when WKRW in Wooster and WKRJ in New Philadelphia became part of Ideastream’s repeater network. We all understand there are very real-world struggles with maintaining station operations and staffing amid a declining listener base and changing technology. Taking over programming control of a storied radio station like WCSB is fundamentally different – they’re not just another easy target for Ideastream to meet their strategic planning goals at the expense of the entire local arts community.
When only one voice dominates the community airwaves and has editorial control over all the news and opinions shared on that broadcast channel, the community suffers. Ideastream’s takeover of WCSB’s programming is no different than how iHeartRadio pursued acquisition and homogenization on the right end of the radio dial. It’s obvious to anyone with ears, that corporate consolidation has resulted in the complete destruction in the quality of music programming on FM radio. Not content to have destroyed your favorite rock and roll radio stations, this same enshitification process is now bringing conformity to the left end of the dial.
CSU still owns the license for now and Ideastream has the option to purchase it later. Other cash strapped universities have outright sold their FCC licenses while others have entered into lease agreements:
– 2011 Vanderbilt University sold WRVU to Nashville Public Radio for $3.3 million
– 2011 University of San Francisco sold KUSF to Classical Public Radio Network for $3.7 million
– 2014 George State University leased WRAS to Georgia Public Broadcasting for $150,000 year for the first two years, and $100,000 annually in succeeding years.
KUSF is now an online streaming station and WRAS and WRVU moved student programming to HD channels and online. The transfer of programming to Ideastream is a bitter pill to swallow regardless of the contractual terms – but the CSU Board of Directors should question Bloomberg’s negotiating skills. Other schools have received millions at the bargaining table and she got….1000 underwriting slots, a seat on the board for herself, an unspecified number of internships and a PR disaster.
So, what’s next for XCSB? Station manager Alison Bomgardner said “Right now all of our options are open, we are definitely exploring some that are more viable than others. Obviously, we have the pipe dream, or our ideal goal of getting our FM signal back. But we also recognize that might not be a viable solution and that might require us to look into other alternative ways of keeping our community together, and finding a new hub for our community to express itself regardless of what Ideastream and Cleveland State University are doing.”
Bomgardner and XCSB business manager Liam Main have been invited to lead a session at the national College Broadcasters conference later this month. XCSB is still planning to hold its Halloween Bash at the Beachland Ballroom, and planning continues for its 50th anniversary alumni celebration. Part two of our story is here, and includes some of the amazing history of WCSB and Cleveland College Radio. Stay tuned.
– The College Radio Foundation is producing a radio program of support for the students and community volunteers of WCSB who had their radio station taken away from them on World College Radio Day, October 3. We are asking that you take 20 seconds to record a message from your college radio station, to say that you stand with the students and community volunteers of XCSB (their new name)! You can also mention how important college radio is. Then please send an mp3 or m4A to this email address as soon as you can: rob@collegeradioday.com
