By Mary Cipriani, Guest Editorial Writer
October 27, 2025
Launched in 2022, the College Radio Society, organized by the College Radio Foundation, is an
effort to unite college radio alumni and to keep the magic of those memories alive. The College
Radio Society is for all college radio alumni who have been involved with college radio in the
past, and may still be currently involved today. We’re inviting all members of the College Radio
Society to share their memories and memorabilia on our Facebook Group. If you’re not yet a
member, join in on the fun. We’d love to hear your stories, see your playlists and program
guides, and other promotional items.
With the news this month about the transfer of WCSB Cleveland State
University’s programming to Ideastream Public Media, we’ve asked Mary Cipriani, 1984 alumni
of WJCU John Carroll University, to share her memories of the Cleveland College Radio scene.
Cipriani was a co-founder of the Cleveland College Radio Coalition which united area college
radio stations. Photos kindly provided by Mary Cipriani.
The most popular tourist attraction in my hometown is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When people ask ‘Why is this museum in Cleveland’, the answer is simply ‘Radio’. The worlds’ first rock and roll concert, the ‘Moondog Coronation Ball’ took place in Cleveland on March 21, 1952, hosted by Disc Jockey Alan Freed who coined the phrase ‘Rock and Roll’ along with Leo Mintz, owner of the local Record Rendezvous record store chain. Elvis’ first concert north of the Mason Dixon line was in Cleveland. The first rock music television show, The Upbeat Show, was live from a Cleveland soundstage, airing for seven years in late 60s and early 70s and syndicated nationally, featuring everyone from The Who, Stevie Wonder, James Brown and The Yardbirds.
In the 1970s and 1980s WMMS was ranked as the top FM radio station in the entire USA. The original on-air talent at WMMS, including Lawrence ‘Kid Leo’ Travagliante, Matt ‘the Cat’ Lapczynski, Betty Korvan, Ed ‘Flash’ Ferenc, and Larry Bole ALL came from Cleveland State’s WCSB. They brought the adventurous spirit of college radio with them and turned WMMS into a rock and roll powerhouse. Former WMMS Program Director John Gorman shares that “In my lifelong career in commercial media, I always found and hired the best, most talented and innovative people from college radio.” Clevelanders lobbied heavily for the museum with WMMS leading the charge with its listening audience. It’s not a stretch to say that without WCSB, there would’ve been no WMMS, and without WMMS, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame likely might not have been built in Cleveland.
We grew up listening to WMMS, and by the time we started DJing on our campus stations we already had deep encyclopedic knowledge of rock and roll history. As a teenager I first heard Patti Smith, Lou Reed, and The Ramones on WMMS, the broadcast signals from the college stations didn’t reach my suburb. As a young teen when I’d meet people from other cities, I was astounded that they had never heard songs by Roxy Music or Iggy Pop. We got the music bug from listening to great radio as teens and found our tribe with fellow student broadcasters when we got to college.
The Northeast Ohio vinyl record market was outsized relative to its population, with album sales rivaling those of other major American cities that had over 5X the population of Cleveland. Local concert promoters Hank LoConti (The Agora) and Jules & Michael Belkin (now part of Live Nation) took a lot of risks on new emerging artists because they knew the local Cleveland audience was an eclectic and receptive one, with bands selling out shows here long before they broke through in other markets.
The late 70s and early 80s was the timeframe when broadcast technology matured which allowed non-commercial stations to upgrade from carrier current to 1000+ watt signals, finally enabling them to reach an audience beyond the confines of their campus dormitories, and as result fueled the popularity of punk and new wave music. Most cities across the country are lucky if they have one or two college radio stations within signal reach, we are fortunate to have four which can be heard throughout most of the Greater Cleveland area, and three additional on the outer suburbs, six more if you include Akron. In the ‘35000 Watts’ college radio documentary, it was noted that Cleveland, Boston and San Francisco each had national reputations as very vibrant new music scenes largely influenced by the concentration of multiple college radio stations in those cities. Because Cleveland is smaller in population, is ‘midwestern nice’, and has an amazing rock and roll history, our local college radio scene was, dare I say, miles ahead of what was – and still is – happening anywhere else in North America.
Far from the tired stereotype of just a bunch of kids goofing around, program hosts at our local college stations have won multiple broadcasting awards (even a Guinness World Record!), spoken at national conferences, and our students have gone onto work professionally at pretty much every single local and national news, media and entertainment organization. Jasen Sokol, General Manager of WJCU John Carroll University adds “I think people across the country who know about college radio, and know how good a college radio town Cleveland is, know what a huge loss it is to no longer have WCSB programming on the airwaves.”
Cleveland was also the home of Alternative Press (AP) magazine, which started in 1985 and grew into a leading rock music publication with international distribution, before being sold in 2020. AP was the first magazine to feature Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Paramore on its covers – bands that got their initial break on college radio. Founder and editor Michael Shea recalls…. “Starting in the early 1980s I was getting into underground music, from heavy metal and then into industrial and goth. One of my good friends was a total punk kid and we would listen to WCSB every time I went to his house. WCSB was my education to underground and post punk music, plus world music, soul and more. My knowledge of music grew and I felt like I grew as a person too the more I listened. I’d tape their radio shows so I could write down the names of the bands and the songs, then go down to Wax Stax to try to find those records. I was reading about these bands in the UK magazines like NME and Sounds but there wasn’t any news locally I could find. It was hard to find information because of course this was pre-internet. I had the idea to create a fanzine to connect all the college radio stations, the clubs, the record stores, and be one source for all the underground news. The first several issues of AP (in 1985) were essentially a Cleveland College Radio Fanzine. If there was no WCSB there would not have been an Alternative Press magazine. I learned so much about music from WCSB, they were the soundtrack in our office for what we wanted to write about. The other college stations were doing cool stuff too but I felt like WCSB was the cream of the crop. “
The legendary Alternative Press magazine
To give you an idea of how adventurous WCSB was, check out this archived playlist from September 1985. More recently, Cleveland college radio were the first to ever play music by local artists that have gone on to international success – Nine Inch Nails, The Black Keys, Kid Cudi, and Machine Gun Kelly. Dylan Baldi, founder and lead singer/guitarist of The Cloud Nothings is a former WRUW disc jockey, and keyboardist Lee Mars who toured with NIN is a former WJCU disc jockey.
WCSB Playlist, September 1985
Some might expect there to have been competitiveness between the different campus stations but the only rivalry we experienced was Us versus the behemoth of WMMS who regularly sucked-up all the attention from the record companies and bands. One couldn’t blame bands for wanting to pursue airplay and interviews on WMMS, after all they were the station that broke everyone from David Bowie to Rush to Bruce Springsteen nationally, but the majority of new wave artists simply weren’t a fit for commercial FM rock radio. By the mid-1980s WMMS rock format became more narrowly focused and key personnel had departed. We felt that we were the ones one at the forefront of the new music scene and wanted the respect for the work we were doing with those emerging artists, so how to achieve that?
The Cleveland College Radio Coalition organization came about organically. There were already a large number of existing interpersonal relationships that linked the Cleveland area college stations – siblings, boyfriends/girlfriends, bandmates, record store co-workers, etc. – so we all already knew and were friendly with many of the staffers at each other’s stations. We hung out at concerts together, listened to each other’s radio shows and even appeared on air with one another. In addition, the relatively small size of Cleveland’s population means that everyone knows everyone on the local music scene – from radio and record stores to music journalists, recording studios, record label reps and concert promoters – and are personal and professional friends with one another.
One weekend in spring of 1982 multiple DJs found ourselves at the same show at the Cleveland Agora nightclub, and we started comparing notes and our conversations just snowballed. We decided a follow-up was in order, and a meeting was organized for station management and disc jockeys from the four main Northeast Ohio colleges: WBWC Baldwin Wallace University, WRUW Case Western Reserve University, WCSB Cleveland State University, and WUJC (now WJCU) John Carroll University. WOBC Oberlin College joined us in late 80s. We took a crack at developing by-laws but quickly decided it would be too complex to organize as a proper non-profit entity, especially one that multiple school’s legal departments would have to sign off on. We wanted our main focus to be on raising the visibility of all the local college stations and sharing skills and resources. We dubbed ourselves the ‘Cleveland College Radio Coalition’, pledged to support one another in promoting college radio and agreed to show a united front when dealing with record labels, concert promoters and bands.
The original promotional College Radio Coalition banner used for events
We wanted to encourage the stations to be a resource for one another – our staff engineers had already been assisting their peers on multiple occasions with equipment troubleshooting. We had informal mentoring so if new staffer had a question about FCC paperwork or equipment purchases, they could reach out to the managers at the other stations for advice. If this sounds odd to you, remember this was a time when you had to network face-to-face or via telephone because things like email and Discord chat groups hadn’t been invented yet!
One of the first projects by the College Radio Coalition was the publication of a joint program guide. By pooling our financial resources, we were able to print 20,000 copies and distribute them to all the area record stores and nightclubs. The joint program guide led to discussions amongst program directors and DJs to coordinate some of our on-air schedules – after all, it wouldn’t make sense for more than one station to be broadcasting Blues or Folk music programs in the same time slot. The Heavy Metal DJs in particular were very supportive of sequencing their on-air schedules resulting in non-stop hard rock from Thursday through Saturday nights, which accelerated growth in the genre’s popularity and ticket sales for local metal shows. DJs even suggested listeners change channels to another station to keep listening to more metal music.
The College Radio Coalition Joint Program Guide (1990)
Another result of networking by College Radio Coalition is that it allowed our Music Directors to regularly exchange contact info for the various record labels. At the time our stations weren’t consistently receiving new releases from the top indie labels. This type of networking in the pre-internet, pre-CMJ Directory era really accelerated our ability to get serviced by the labels, especially the overseas indie labels as contact info was difficult to track down and had frequent turnover. This united front enabled us to pressure distributors to service all of the stations, and we’d often provide them with the mailing addresses of the other stations along with our own.
Another advantage our campus radio stations had (as a side effect of WMMS’ dominance, and strong vinyl sales in NE Ohio) was that multiple record companies had regional sales offices headquartered in Cleveland – Warner-Elektra-Atlantic, Polygram/Mercury, RCA, Capitol, and Columbia, in addition to a couple of music distribution warehouses. This gave us direct access to those responsible for regional promotion of the artists on their labels. Once all the local college stations upgraded their broadcast signals and were reaching a wider audience – and it was reflected in local album sales – those label reps became very receptive and responsive to our requests for interviews and station visits. And it also helped that some label contacts, like the rep who handled Sire & Island artists for WEA happened to be a former WCSB DJ and he didn’t need convincing about college radio’s ability to break new artists.
Our increased visibility and broadcast range led us to asking – and getting – recognition as co-sponsors for multiple concerts, plus regularly getting tickets for on-air contests. We were able to work with both the smaller indie nightclubs, as well as major concert promoters like Hank LoConti of The Agora and The Belkin Brothers. Our station call letters appeared on the concert advertisements for bands such as Culture Club, Gary Numan, The Stranglers, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cure, The Smiths and Depeche Mode. When we announced local concerts on air, our DJs read that these shows were “presented by WBWC WCSB WOBC WRUW and WUJC”.
A collection of concerts advertisements, sponsored by Cleveland college stations
We were particularly proud of an early Laurie Anderson show at 3000 seat Cleveland Music Hall. The Belkins were concerned if the tour would do well locally considering Anderson was playing mostly 1-2000 seat venues in other major cities that had far larger populations. Anderson’s Big Science album was in heavy rotation on all the college stations, and we especially loved Oh Superman (and not just because it was 8+ minutes long and allowed you to take a bathroom break!) The concert was sold-out and was the first show where we really proved ourselves as reliable partners capable of working with the largest concert promoter.
Barry Gabel, Live Nation Senior VP of Marketing And Sales, reflected: “Throughout our years with Belkin Productions and now Live Nation, college radio has provided us and record labels the unique opportunity to introduce new artists or artists that were not mainstream but had a loyal following. College radio provided us with an outlet to promote our concerts – from smaller venues like The Odeon, The Phantasy Night Club, The Variety, The Agora then onto larger amphitheaters and arenas. A lot of passionate impactful music fans had their start either in working at WCSB or listening to the station. Losing that voice is disappointing.”
A Depeche Mode 1990 tour ad sponsored by Cleveland college radio
Cleveland State’s WCSB had the advantage of being located downtown and their studios were walking distance between the old Agora location and the infamous Swingos hotel. Bands frequently stopped by the station for interviews on their way to-from soundchecks – including members of The Dead Boys, Gene Loves Jezebel, Green Day, Love And Rockets, Metallica, PIL (John Lydon), Sisters Of Mercy, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Violent Femmes, U2, and UB40. WBWC WRUW and WUJC scored interviews with The Alarm, Laurie Anderson, Phillip Glass, Madness, New Order, New York Dolls, Gary Numan, The Pretenders, Lou Reed, Pete Shelley, Simple Minds, Thompson Twins and more. I cringe to think of the irreplaceable treasure trove of music interviews that are lost in the ether simply because our students didn’t have film cameras or tape recorders handy to capture these amazing guest appearances. One surviving interview was Metallica by WUJC DJs Eric Sosinski and Mario Becerra which the band included on their ‘Ride The Lightning’ box set. Lars Ulrich of Metallica has specifically cited heavy metal programming on Cleveland college radio as key to building their early following.
Lars Ulrich of Metallica wearing a WCSB t-shirt
Metallica box set featuring WUJC interview (complete with typo!)
Another unique differentiator of Cleveland College Radio is the large number of community programmers and alumni disc jockeys who have continued to volunteer for decades after graduation, probably the biggest concentration anywhere in the US. Currently each Cleveland college radio station has anywhere from 5 to 15 on-air hosts who have each volunteered for least 10 years, some as long as 20, 30 and even over 40 years! And that doesn’t include the many now retired programmers who hosted shows for decades. This deep institutional knowledge and passion for radio allows the ‘circle of life’ to continue as the skills transfer happens with each new class of students.
The tremendous sense of community and camaraderie amongst all the local college DJs was apparent when the shocking news broke on October 3 about the takeover of WCSB’s programming by Ideastream. Messages of support were shared by WJCU WRUW and others, with personal posts on social media lighting up online discussions non-stop since then. Multiple XCSB disc jockeys have made guest appearances on the other local college stations since the changeover. Staffers from the other stations have attended XCSBs campus protests. We’re like the NATO of college radio, an attack on one of us is considered an attack on all of us.
Instagram statement of support from WJCU
Instagram statement of support from WRUW
Joe Madigan, host of WJCU’s Jumpin’ Joe’s Basement Show elegantly explained: “As any parent knows, each of your children has a unique personality. You’d never say to parents at the funeral of one of their children, ‘well, you still have two other kids’. College Radio DJs in Cleveland are a family and we are mourning the loss of a beloved family member.”
Elizabeth Papp-Taylor, long time host of The Hungarian Hour on WCSB adds: “All the nationalities want to keep their language and culture alive, to teach their children about their traditions, to keep all our listeners informed about news and events specific to them. The college stations are a critical component because no one else in town is providing what they do for our communities.”
WJCU’s general manager Jasen Sokol said: “I wasn’t surprised to see us and other stations reach out and show support for WCSB. A lot of us have been around college radio for a while and we all kind of have this one big college radio community in Cleveland. One of the things that we talk about with our students is that college radio is bigger than just your one station at your one school, that it’s something that is worth supporting, and it’s something worth protecting.”
The loss of WCSB is acutely painful for small business owners like Cindy Barber of The Beachland Ballroom, where The Black Keys played their first gig in 2002. Barber cites a recent report by the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), which found that Ohio’s independent live entertainment industry drives $1.5 billion in State GDP but only 20% of venues are considered profitable. The live entertainment sector is both a cultural anchor and a major economic force, with venues in Cuyahoga County driving the bulk of this economic activity in northeastern Ohio. Across all types of stages, venue operators ranked their top operational challenge as ‘Marketing and Bringing In An Audience’ – which is the very thing that Ideastream has torn away from these local small businesses.
Barber says: “Without WCSB we can’t promote the kinds of artists that we typically book into our venues. For example, there’s no one on the commercial dial, or NPR, that plays rockabilly music. But there are college radio shows that will play a rockabilly artist, and we can get right to that specific audience that will attend a show by a rockabilly artist at an independent venue and support those musicians. To not have WCSB as an outlet anymore is a huge blow to the entire music community in Cleveland. WCSB has always been the most adventurous station in Cleveland, with the widest variety of show formats. They’ve always been willing to interview artists and promote live shows for all the venues in town.”
Rachel Hunt, a WRUW host and the marketing director at The Grog Shop concurred: “My marketing budget is small to non-existent and we have the thinnest of margins. College radio is the last outlet for musicians that isn’t pay to play.”
The storied 49+ year history of WCSB and it’s critical integration with the local cultural and community scene are just part of the reason why Clevelanders have found this takeover by Ideastream so shocking and enraging. Local business leaders have been strategizing on ways to grow Cleveland’s entertainment industry into another music hub city like Nashville – CSU’s president Dr. Laura Bloomberg and Ideastream’s CEO Kevin Martin must not have gotten that memo. Even though CSU was known to be having financial challenges, locals didn’t see this coming because you’d never expect organizations who purport to support the arts to be so ignorant and callous about the key role that WCSB plays in supporting both their students and the local community. Clevelanders have taken great umbrage that it was two outsiders, (and Ideastream’s Martin doesn’t even live here), who have come into our town and act like they know better than locals what our arts community needs.
On October 20, Cleveland City Council unanimously passed an emergency resolution supporting the students to regain control of WCSB. Councilman Kris Harsh said that they got more public comments on this issue than any other one to date. “I don’t think that Dr. Laura Bloomberg and Kevin Martin understood how deep WCSB reached into the community when they made this decision without consulting with anyone”. Council has invited CSU’s president Dr. Laura Bloomberg and Ideastream’s Kevin Martin to meet and discuss but neither has accepted, with CSU stating that “we stand by our decision”.
The Cleveland College Radio Coalition held regular meetings and published joint guides until the early 1990s then gradually faded as members graduated – but the spirit still carries on in friendships and continued common cause, and we continue to jointly promote local music and arts events and engage together with the local community. In a wonderful show of solidarity, WRUW started a new weekly program “XCSB On Air” which will feature a rotating guest list of XCSB college radio DJs. The College Radio Foundation has produced a special “We Stand With XCSB” college radio program to give XCSB staffers the opportunity to address their listeners, since they did not get a chance to say goodbye to their audience. We invite you all to air this program on your stations to show your support of XCSB. XCSB has a new website and you can keep up with all the news at https://xcsb.org and planning continues for their 50th anniversary alumni celebration to look back on their legacy and national impact.
Nowadays, students have multiple professional organizations that they can participate in for networking such as The College Radio Foundation, College Broadcasters Inc (CBI) which didn’t exist when we started the Cleveland College Radio Coalition, and the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System which was established in 1940! Locally, we’ve started discussions about ‘reforming the band’ to once again network, share skills and resources with other student stations in the Northeast Ohio area. If you’re the only station in town, look to network across your state. Shout out to the group of student radio stations in Spain (ARU) that have joined together! Other key lessons from our recent experience is 1) always keep your school informed of your impact and reach into the local community 2) show them examples of the negative press and negative publicity that arises from making decisions without input from students. We encourage each and every College Radio Day member station to network with as many of your peers as possible in your local geographies – there is strength in unity, and fun!
“We are all watching and hoping that XCSB continues the fight, and that one day, WCSB might be resurrected, celebrated, and restored to its rightful place as the voice and heartbeat of its community. Until then, we remember what was lost, but we also rededicate ourselves to ensuring that the next time a college radio station’s existence is threatened, all of us are ready to speak out, stand up, and fight for its future. College radio matters. Let’s never stop making sure that everyone knows why!” – Rob Quicke, founder of College Radio Day.
