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There was probably no more invigorating undergrad semester for Luanne Bole-Becker’s than her junior year at Cleveland State in the spring of 1976.
Bole-Becker was studying accounting, but her heart was in music and thoughts of how it could connect the unconnectable. Come her third year at CSU, Bole-Becker was chosen to help oversee what would be a monumental switch: Converting its student address station, WCSB, into a full-fledged, publicly broadcast one completely run by students. What had only been heard around the cafeteria in Stilwell Hall would be listened to all across Northeast Ohio.
CSU’s board of trustees, its leaders—President Walter Waetjen and Vice President Arnold Tew—all chipped in. Turntables and microphones were bought. Records were donated. By May, Room 956 in University Tower was converted into a full-on studio. It aired its first broadcast on May 10, 1976.
“It was euphoric,” Bole-Becker, who signed the station’s first certificate with the Federal Communications Commission, recalled recently. “There was a keen desire to reach a broad audience that just wasn’t possible when we were only closed-circuit.”
Led by general manager Paul Bunker and program director Bob Becker (who Luanne would later marry), WCSB made its public debut in 1976 embodying what college radio was at the time and what it could be in the future. There was a comedy show (“Big Lip Theatre”), poetry hour (“Dark Tower”), New Wave (“Import Invasion), bluegrass, classical, jazz, financial tips, college news, national news, Browns talk.
“It was always this raucous democracy of people trying new things,” Steve Wainstead, a WCSB DJ in the 1990s, told me. “And I see that even today.”
Today, of course, is over.
On October 3, which was World College Radio Day, a handful of WCSB DJs and managers walked up to the Cole Center off Chester Avenue, where the station’s been since 2005, to find that their key cards didn’t work. Cleveland Police had to let them inside the building, only to find out that, around two in the morning, CSU admins had effectively eliminated their jobs. Managers had a half hour, one told me, to tear down posters, obituaries, stickers. (The equipment, owned by CSU, had to stay.) By noon, its antenna would be broadcasting jazz full time, simulcast from Ideastream, the local NPR affiliate. WCSB, seven months shy of its 50th anniversary, was no longer run by students.
In the hours and days that followed, details of the switch were shared by those involved and further tendrils were reported out through public records.
Ideastream, looking for a terrestrial radio home for JazzNEO, had approached CSU about taking over 89.1 FM. (It had also approached John Carroll about WJCU, but was rebuffed.)
Cleveland State didn’t sell the FCC license, and in fact received no cash from Ideastream in the deal. Instead, it transferred management of the station for an eight-year term in exchange for a board seat for CSU President Laura Bloomberg and some 1,000 mentions of the school across Ideastream’s TV and radio stations and an additional 1,000 on-air spots touting the collaboration between the two entities. Records show Ideastream also received the right to match any offer to CSU to purchase the station during the term of the agreement, which has a provision for a pair of five-year extensions.
CSU, meanwhile, touted the part of the deal that said, “Ideastream will prioritize paid and for-credit internships, classroom-level projects and other opportunities for students enrolled at (CSU’s) School of Communication and other colleges within CSU,” documents said. “Ideastream will work cooperatively with (CSU) to provide student internships and classroom-level special projects in journalism, television, and radio production, marketing and graphic design.”
There were, however, no details about the number of said internships.
The decision to cut WCSB was not made, it must be said, in isolation. CSU’s lingering budget deficit, dovetailed with a Statehouse with diversity in its crosshairs, has led to an era of loss. In the spring, CSU slashed wrestling, softball and women’s golf. It sunsetted 22 majors, from French, to anthropology and its Doctor of Nursing Practice. It bought out four dozen faculty and staff. And by September, weeks before it switched over WCSB to Ideastream, CSU closed down its Mareyjoyce Green Women’s Center and its Office of Inclusion and Multicultural Engagement. It replaced its LGBTQ+ Student Center with a resource and hangout for veterans.
CSU President Laura Bloomberg, who moved to Cleveland in 2021 after eight years in Minnesota, has denied that axing WCSB was done so due to some political agenda. On October 14, Bloomberg joined Ideastream Director Kevin Martin and current and former WCSB DJs Alison Bomgardner and Lawrence Daniel Caswell on Ideastream’s Sound of Ideas to sift through—and trade barbs about—what had happened days prior. Bloomberg seemed anything but apologetic.
“I didn’t specifically set out and say, ‘Let’s end student radio,’” she told Sound of Ideas host Stephanie Haney. “That was not at all where the conversation started for us.” Bloomberg suggested the handshake with Ideastream was akin to others the university had made with institutions across the county—NASA Glenn, the Cleveland Clinic, Sherwin Williams. “My focus is always strategic partnerships in the community.”
Martin based his reasoning on a 2022 strategic plan the company had paid for to help steer programming after the pandemic. (The year prior, it had taken over WKSU’s signal in Kent, via a similar Public Service Offering Agreement.) “What the study told us was that the overwhelming majority—it was skewed towards older listeners—consume jazz through a terrestrial, analog broadcast signal,” Martin said. Ideastream had its classical station (WCLV), its TV station (WVIZ), its NPR radio (WKSU). Adding a permanent home for JazzNEO on the FM dial, Martin explained, was yet another win-win. “I just think it’s going to grow and yield wonderful things for the student body,” he said.
Later that day, Luanne Bole-Becker hopped on her laptop to type out her own thoughts to Martin. Her plea, like those from other alums of college radio, was foundational: She, along with her late husband, had seen WCSB as a base for decades in radio or TV. She worked media for the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. She founded her own production company. Her and Bob won a handful of Emmys.
Bole-Becker was wrecked. “It saddens and disappoints me that you have pursued this path,” she wrote Martin. “These actions dishonored a segment of Cleveland’s vibrant radio community that should have been celebrated and encouraged for at least another 50 years.”
And continued to give opportunities to those like Alison Bomgardner.
Like many a teenager, Bomgardner grew up in the southern Cleveland suburbs with an itch for music. A guitarist, she learned songs by Joan Baez, Tom Petty, The Beatles. (She has a Yellow Submarine tattoo on her left bicep.) By the end of her first year at CSU, as a politics and Spanish major, Bomgardner had tried out an on-stage persona, Nicole Otero, but didn’t feel sated. “I wanted something different in a community,” Bomgardner said. “I wanted to take it a step further.”
In February 2023, halfway through her second year, she found WCSB. A friend had pushed her to apply, so she did. “When I found out there’s an organization on campus that focuses specifically on playing cool music and giving you the opportunity to project your voice into a larger community,” she said, “I was immediately intrigued.” She chose Squirrel as her DJ name. By the following semester, Bomgardner was so enthusiastic about and involved in WCSB she was elected to be its general manager.
The thing about college radio, as Bomgardner found out quickly, is that it thrives inherently off its gift and responsibility of free speech. WCSB, as it was for 49 years, was not beholden to advertisers; its operating budget, roughly six figures, was almost half backed by donors. (The other half from CSU’s general fund.) With that FCC license and antenna, WCSB could pretty much broadcast anything it so desired—19th century gospels, a gay and lesbian hour, Iraq War critiques, grindcore metal, up-and-coming rock bands unheard on Cleveland airwaves.
The whole potential of leading such a channel, one that shunned any Hot 100 model, enthralled Bomgardner. “That was the best part about WCSB,” she said, sitting on a bench in the center of CSU’s quad, dressed in an oversized leather coat and pale-blue bellbottoms. Bomgardner seemed clear-minded despite an endless logjam of emails on her phone to reply to. “If there was something new that needed to be on air that iHeart Radio or any other station wasn’t covering, we were going to make sure as hell someone was getting the chance to do that.”
And the evolution of WCSB, and college radio, took on a different significance during the flourishing of the internet in the late 1990s, when radio stations tried tinkering with digital versions of their stations to compete with the climb of iTunes and Pandora, and into today’s digital world. Radio ownership dropped 20 percent come the mid-2000s, and by 2024 less than half of all audio listening came through an AM or FM signal. College radio has essentially gone the way of vinyl: no longer a technological necessity but adored for its intrinsic value.
Steve Wainstead, who helped put WCSB on the internet as general manager from 1995 to 1997, scoffed when I asked if keeping a digital stream would suffice. “Hey, you know my Apple Music library has more music than I can listen to in my life,” he said. “But to have someone live and curating, saying here’s this, here’s that—that has value. To take calls from people in the community—that has value. And that’s a lot of what WCSB was doing.”
College Broadcasters Inc., a member-driven organization supporting students in media, noted in a statement there are other salient reasons why the station was essential to students’ futures.
“Broadcast radio operates under federal regulation. Students learn FCC compliance, indecency laws, Emergency Alert System protocols, and station identification rules. Streaming has zero FCC oversight. Every radio station in America needs staff who understand compliance. You can’t learn this from podcasting,” it said. “On broadcast radio, there’s no pause button. Technical failures must be solved while on-air. Board operation happens in real-time with live callers and breaking news. Podcasts can be edited and fixed in post-production. Radio professionals like news anchors and sports announcers must perform live. This skill cannot be developed through pre-recorded content. Students at WCSB learned radio frequency engineering, antenna systems, and transmitter maintenance. They troubleshot real transmission issues affecting thousands of listeners. Streaming requires basic digital audio knowledge. Broadcast engineers are essential to every radio and TV station, and this technical expertise is specific to over-the-air broadcasting.”
Neither CSU nor Ideastream seemed prepared for the onslaught of criticism that followed the decision. Social media was flooded with outcry. A protest was staged on campus. Another was organized outside of the City Club of Cleveland last Friday during an event on the future of public media featuring Ideastream Public Media’s Kevin Martin. They held signs that read “SHAME ON CSU” and “JAZZ IS NOT A PUBLIC SERVICE.” They shouted “Shame on Laura!” and “Kevin Martin stinks” and “You fucking suck!”
“I mean, jazz? It’s clear they’re trying to attract wealthy donors,” Alexa Howard, who ran a show called Girls Style Know said outside.
Nick, a CSU sophomore environmental studies major in a black peacoat, said the move to axe WCSB could cost admins their standing. “Honestly, I think if Bloomberg does more stuff like this,” he said, “people are going to call for her resignation.”
Even the city is now involved. On October 20, Cleveland City Council introduced and unanimously passed an emergency resolution expressing support for WCSB’s DJs and fanbase and urging “Cleveland State University to fully restore WCSB radio to its students.”
Ward 13 Councilman Kris Harsh, a self-professed WCSB superfan who wrote the resolution, told Scene he saw Bloomberg’s abrupt decision to silence a half century of college radio as if it was a closure of a wing of City Hall. It’s how, he said, the majority of Council feels. “They understand that students need access to expression and understand when powerful people try to silence those voices,” he said. “And that’s not something that any of my colleagues are okay with.”
As of the middle of October, the microphones, computers, headphones and some 50,000 records sit idle in a room on the third floor of the Cole Center. When I asked Bomgardner what plans she has to rescue—and preserve—a half century of CSU college radio, she seemed crestfallen. “What I was told recently was that the equipment and the music library are the property of Cleveland State.” (A spokesperson for CSU did not respond to a request for comment on the collection’s future.)
All of which has put Bomgardner in a tough spot: both the public face of nixed college radio (she’s flying out to a conference in Denver to speak about it) and one given the task of somehow bringing it back in some form. Almost right after WCSB’s signal went to jazz, Bomgardner started XCSB, a movement that could segue to an actual replacement, say on podcast or streaming services, maybe YouTube or Spotify.
Or, will Bloomberg listen? She did in August, when CSU decided to reinstate its U-Pass, the discounted transit card program, after students pushed back. It’s possible, even if it feels unlikely.
“Frankly, I don’t think they’ll do the right thing,” she said. “I think the only way they will is through community pressure and demonstrating that this community is upset. Everyone has a different way of thinking about the community. But we all come around to this one thing, this deep passion for music and this need to keep pushing the boundary of what should be on air. And, well, we’re not going to stop until we get some good guarantees about what’s going to happen to our station.”
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Mark Oprea
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