Ideastream (marketed as Ideastream Public Media) is the main

public broadcaster Public broadcasting (or public service broadcasting) is radio, television, and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service with a commitment to avoiding political and commercial influence. Public broadcasters receive ...

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–United States border, Canada–U.S. maritime border ...

, United States, serving both

Greater Cleveland The Cleveland metropolitan area, or Greater Cleveland as it is more commonly known, is the metropolitan area surrounding the city of Cleveland in Northeast Ohio, United States. According to the 2020 census results, the six-county Cleveland, OH ...

and much of

Northeast Ohio Northeast Ohio is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that comprises the northeastern counties of the U.S. state of Ohio. Definitions of the region consist of 16 to 23 counties between the southern shore of Lake Erie and the foothills ...

. Its headquarters, newsroom, and radio and television studios are located at the Idea Center in

Playhouse Square Playhouse Square is a theater district in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is the largest performing arts center in the US outside of New York City (only Lincoln Center is larger). Constructed in a span of 19 months in the early 1920s ...

Downtown Cleveland Downtown Cleveland is the central business district of Cleveland, Ohio, United States. The economic and cultural center of the city and the Cleveland metropolitan area, it is Cleveland's oldest district, with its Public Square, Cleveland, Publi ...

. It operates

WKSU WKSU (89.7 FM broadcasting, FM) is a non-commercial educational radio station licensed to serve Kent, Ohio, featuring a public radio format. Owned by Kent State University and operated by Ideastream, Ideastream Public Media, WKSU's primary s ...

(), the region's main radio news service aligned with

NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...

, and owns

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be #Relationship to other music traditions, distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical mu ...

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

outlet

WCLV WCLV (90.3 FM) is a non-commercial educational radio station licensed to Cleveland, Ohio, carrying a fine art/classical music format. Owned by Ideastream Public Media, the station serves both Greater Cleveland and Northeast Ohio as the home ...

() an
JazzNeo
(HD 90.3-2 FM) and Cleveland

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

member station

WVIZ WVIZ (channel 25) is a PBS member television station in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is owned by Ideastream Public Media alongside classical music station WCLV () and co-managed with Kent State University–owned WKSU (), the NPR member ...

(channel 25). Ideastream was formed in July 2001 through a

merger of equals Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of a company, business organization, or one of their operating units is transferred to or consolidated with another entity. They may happen through direct absorpt ...

between WVIZ and then-NPR member WCPN (since supplanted by WCLV), which up to that point operated separately as Educational Television Association of Metropolitan Cleveland and Cleveland Public Radio, respectively. Talks of a cooperative agreement between the two entities began in 1999, but was first proposed in 1993, when co-founder Jerrold Wareham was named as WVIZ's general manager. WCLV, then operating as a Lorain-licensed station at , was donated to the group in 2011. Since 2021, Ideastream has operated WKSU and its

repeater In telecommunications, a repeater is an electronic device that receives a signal and retransmits it. Repeaters are used to extend transmissions so that the signal can cover longer distances or be received on the other side of an obstruction. Some ...

network on behalf of owner

Kent State University Kent State University (KSU) is a Public university, public research university in Kent, Ohio, United States. The university includes seven regional campuses in Northeast Ohio located in Kent State University at Ashtabula, Ashtabula, Kent State ...

, and has been Cleveland and

Akron Akron () is a city in Summit County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. It is the fifth-most populous city in Ohio, with a population of 190,469 at the 2020 census. The Akron metropolitan area, covering Summit and Portage counties, had ...

's sole NPR station of record since March 28, 2022. Kevin E. Martin has been the organization's president/

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

since January 9, 2017, succeeding Jerrold Wareham. Jenny Northern, a staffer with WCLV since 2001, was elevated to station manager in 2014 and became general manager for all stations in 2020. All stations in the group jointly rebranded as Ideastream Public Media on June 15, 2021, to celebrate the entity's 20th anniversary.

Radio

WKSU

WKSU was founded by

in 1950; Ideastream has operated the station since October 1, 2021, via a public service operating agreement with the university. Originally broadcasting solely to the campus population as a

non-commercial educational station A non-commercial educational station (NCE station) is a radio station or television station that does not accept on-air advertisements (television advertisement, TV ads or radio advertisement, radio ads), as defined in the United States by the Fed ...

, WKSU has been an NPR news and information affiliate since 1973, and is the originating radio station for the City Club of Cleveland's ''Friday Forum''. Licensed to

Kent, Ohio Kent is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the largest city in Portage County, Ohio, Portage County. It is located along the Cuyahoga River in Northeast Ohio on the western edge of the county. The population was 28,215 at the 2020 United States ...

, WKSU's signal is rebroadcast full-time over a network of five full-power

s and two low-power

translators Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

. With a combined 22-county coverage area and potential audience of 3.6 million people, WKSU and its repeater network boast the largest collective footprint for an FM radio station in Ohio. Since 2022, it has also served Lorain County and the western portion of Greater Cleveland via Lorain-licensed

WCPN WCPN (104.9 FM broadcasting, FM) is a non-commercial educational radio station licensed to Lorain, Ohio, featuring a public radio format as a repeater of Kent, Ohio, Kent–licensed WKSU. Owned by Ideastream, Ideastream Public Media, the stat ...

(). The station and its full-power repeater network carry a roster of four

HD Radio HD Radio (HDR) is a trademark for in-band on-channel (IBOC) digital radio broadcast technology. HD radio generally simulcast, simulcasts an existing analog radio station in digital format with less noise and with additional text information. HD R ...

subchannel In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a method of transmitting more than one independent program stream simultaneously from the same digital radio or television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compressi ...

s: a simulcast of WKSU's

analog transmission Analog transmission is a transmission method of conveying information using a continuous signal which varies in amplitude, phase, or some other property in proportion to that information. It could be the transfer of an analog signal, using an an ...

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

via '' FolkAlley.com'', a simulcast of WCLV and an alternate lineup of news and talk programs.

WCLV

The region's only full-time

and

outlet, WCLV was founded on November 1, 1962, as a commercial radio station at . A complex asset and intellectual property swap on July 3, 2001, re-established WCLV on as part of a long-term plan initiated by founding owners Robert Conrad and Rich Marschner to preserve the format from being subsumed by ownership consolidation in the radio industry. With station operations moved to the Idea Center in 2010, WCLV was donated to Ideastream in 2011 and converted to non-commercial status in 2013. WCLV has been the originating station for

Cleveland Orchestra The Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. Founded in 1918 by the pianist and impresario Adella Prentiss Hughes, the orchestra is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the " Big Five". T ...

radio broadcasts since 1965 and for ''

Weekend Radio ''Weekend Radio'' is a radio variety show hosted by Robert Conrad; its flagship station is WCLV in Cleveland, Ohio. The program offers a mixture of light classical music with audio essays and comedy recordings. ''Weekend Radio'' is syndicated an ...

'' since 1982. WCLV's current frequency was previously home to WCPN, one of Ideastream's two founding partners and, from 1984 to 2022, competed with WKSU as the region's other NPR member. It is also the successor station to WBOE, which the Cleveland Board of Education operated from 1938 to 1978, ( Guide to reading History Cards) one of the first formally licensed non-commercial educational radio stations on the FM dial and one of the first FM stations in Ohio.

Television

Ideastream's television service, WVIZ, was founded on February 7, 1965, as the 100th public television station in the United States. WVIZ at launch boasted the first female

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

of a major-market television station in the United States. Betty Cope, who played an active role in the station's formation and original focus towards

educational television Educational television or learning television is the use of television programs in the field of distance education. It may be in the form of individual television programs or dedicated specialty channels that are often associated with cable televi ...

programming for school districts and telecourses for area colleges; WVIZ gradually adopted the conventional

PBS Kids PBS Kids (stylized as PBS KIDS) is the branding used for nationally distributed children's programming carried by the U.S. public television network PBS. The brand encompasses a daytime block of children's programming carried daily by most PBS ...

and PBS lineups starting in the early 1990s. Through WVIZ, Ideastream jointly operates and manages The Ohio Channel (which is carried on a WVIZ subchannel) and the Ohio Public Radio and Television Statehouse News Bureau.

References

External links