WCPN

Early student broadcast over WBOE (1939)[3]

Organized radio broadcasting was introduced in the United States in the early 1920s, and by the mid-1930s the standard AM broadcast band was considered to be too full to allow any meaningful increase in the number of stations. Looking to expand the number of available frequencies, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began to issue licenses to parties interested in testing the suitability of using higher transmitting frequencies between roughly 25 and 44 MHz. These stations were informally known as "Apex" stations, due to the tall height of their transmitter antennas, which were needed because coverage was primarily limited to local line-of-sight distances. These original Apex stations operated under experimental licenses, and like standard broadcasting stations used amplitude modulation (AM) transmissions.

On July 22, 1937, the Cleveland Board of Education filed an application to establish an experimental broadcasting station operating on 26.4 MHz.[4] However, while monitoring the first group of Apex stations assignments, the FCC realized that, due to the strengthening of the ionosphere during periods of high solar activity, at times the lower end of the VHF frequencies would produce strong, and undesirable, skywave signals that were heard as far way as Australia. This determination led to the FCC moving the developing broadcasting service stations to higher frequencies that were less affected by solar influences. In October 1937, the FCC announced a sweeping allocation of frequency assignments that included a band for Apex stations, consisting of 75 channels with 40 kHz separations, and spanning from 41.02 to 43.98 MHz.[5] In addition, in January 1938 the band's first 25 channels, from 41.02 to 41.98 MHz, were reserved for non-commercial educational stations.[6] (Although there had been stations operated by educational institutions on the standard AM band since the early 1920s, at this time there was not a separate license classification for them.)

Reflecting the changes, on January 31, 1938 the Board of Education's application was modified from an experimental station to specify an educational station, now operating on 41.50 MHz with 500 watts.[4] The station was assigned the call letters WBOE, and was the first authorized educational broadcasting station.[7][8] WBOE became fully licensed on November 21, 1938,[4] with facilities located in the Lafayette School on Abell Avenue. The station later moved to the sixth floor of the Board of Education Building on East 6th Street. WBOE's transmitting frequency was much higher than standard radios could tune to at this time, so 150 specially constructed sets were purchased and distributed to the various schools. At first the station operated only during school hours, and in 1939 was broadcasting instructional material for students from kindergarten to high school for seven hours from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.[9]

In mid-1939 WBOE experimented with facsimile transmissions sent outside of regular programming hours, for distributing printed materials, including such things as lesson instructions, announcements and maps.[10][11]

By 1940 WBOE had been joined by two other educational Apex stations: WCNY (now WNYE) in New York City and WBKY in Beattyville, Kentucky (now WUKY in Lexington). However, at the time the Apex band was established the FCC noted that "The Commission at an early date will consider carefully the needs and requirements for high-frequency broadcast stations using both conventional [AM] modulation and frequency modulation".[5] The commission's studies soon found significant advantages to FM transmissions over the Apex AM signals, with sound quality, and especially resistance to interference from static, including from lightning, found to be far superior for FM. In May 1940, the FCC decided to authorize an FM broadcast band, effective January 1, 1941, operating on 40 channels spanning 42–50 MHz, with the first five channels reserved for educational stations.[12] This new assignment also resulted in the elimination of the Apex band, and the Apex stations were informed that they needed to either go silent or convert to FM.[13]

In August 1940 WBOE applied to change to FM operation with 1,000 watts on 42.5 MHz,[4] and new FM radio receivers were purchased for placement in the participating schools. A transmitter was donated by FM's inventor, Edwin Howard Armstrong, and on February 3, 1941 WBOE became the first educational FM station, still maintaining a schedule of seven hours of programming from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on school days.[14] At the time FM broadcasting was in its infancy and only about a dozen FM stations were on the air in the entire country, most of them experimental stations.

Four years later the FCC announced that, due to interference concerns, it was reallocating the current FM "low band" frequencies to other services, and existing FM band stations would be relocated to 88-106 MHz (later expanded to 108 MHz). Once again this meant that the transmitter had to be replaced, and the school radios upgraded for reception on the new band.[15][16] In July 1946 the FCC directed that FM stations currently operating on 42-44 MHz would have to move to new frequencies by the end of the year,[17] and WBOE was reassigned to 44.3 MHz.[18] Despite these technical challenges, earlier that March, WBOE administrator Dr. William B. Levenson spoke at a conference held by the Canadian National Advisory Council on School Broadcasting regarding how to direct an educational FM radio station; executives from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were also in attendance.[19]

WBOE's initial assignment on the new FM "high" band was for 90.1 MHz, however a subsequent reallocation in the fall of 1947 moved the station to 90.3 MHz.[20] During a transition period the FCC allowed stations to simultaneously broadcast on both their old and new assignments, and in July 1948 the Board of Education requested permission to remain on 44.5 MHz "for as long as possible",[21] and from September 1 to the end of the year WBOE was permitted to broadcast on both frequencies.[22] On January 1, 1949, a modified license authorized WBOE to broadcast solely on 90.3 MHz, increasing its transmitter power to 3,000 watts, with an effective radiated power (ERP) of 10,000 watts.

From late January 1958 until March 1958, WBOE broadcast the evening programming of WERE-FM (98.5) from 7:00 until 10:00, while WERE-FM was rebuilt. A request to do this was approved by the Cleveland Board of Education during the regular Board meeting of January 20, 1958. WERE-FM resumed full-time regular broadcasting by early March 1958. On March 5, 1958, a "sincere thank you" letter for the facilities and "excellent cooperation received by Mr. Leo Battin and his fine staff" at WBOE was sent to the Board of Education by Richard M. Klaus, Vice President and General Manager of radio station WERE.[23]

At the regular March 16, 1959 Cleveland Board of Education Meeting, "the Board authorized WBOE-FM to go ahead in a joint program with WERE-FM, on a non-commercial basis, on two Sunday evenings (April 20 and 27) from 8:00pm until 10:45pm" to broadcast a "Seven Arts" program as an experiment in stereophonic sound.[24] On January 18, 1960, the Cleveland Board of Education favored "the use of WBOE to allow for a program for doctors by the Academy of Medicine during evening hours". How long this programming lasted is unknown. On December 9, 1959, WBOE increased power to 5,000 watts, with an ERP of 15,000 watts.

By the mid-1960s, the predecessors to National Public Radio (NPR)—the National Educational Radio Network and the National Association of Educational Broadcasters—distributed programs produced by member stations for use by WBOE and other stations. An example of one of the general-interest programs was The Old Record Box, a 15-minute series featuring cylinder records from the turn-of-the-century, produced in the mid-1960s by WFBE, the station owned by the Flint, Michigan Board of Education. In the 1970s, NPR continued to provide this service to educational stations. Examples of educational programs for in-school use included What You See Is What You Get, a social studies/economics program, and the English-language program Fun From The Dictionary. The WBOE-produced series Drama On Stage and Screen was picked up and distributed nationally by NPR. This series featured interviews conducted by WBOE's best known broadcaster, Cecilia Evans. She interviewed people involved in stage, screen and television careers, such as actor Greg Morris of CBS-TV's Mission: Impossible series.

In 1973-1974, WBOE had new studio facilities built at 10600 Quincy Avenue in the eastern side of Cleveland. In 1976 the station's power was increased to 50,000 watts with the transmitter and tower in Parma, Ohio, one of the southwestern Cleveland suburbs.[4] Until December 1976, WBOE's programming was primarily instructional programming intended for Cleveland school classrooms. Generally the station broadcast from 7:55 a.m. or 8:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. on school days; school programming would often end at 3:00 p.m. Light entertainment, public service or educational programs of general interest concluded the broadcast day.

As educational television developed, the effectiveness of educational radio was reduced, and work began in the early 1970s to convert WBOE into an NPR affiliate. The June 28, 1973 Cleveland Board of Education meeting authorized "contracts for furnishings and delivering equipment for expansion and relocation of radio station WBOE".[25] The plan was to move the station from its long-time home in the main Board of Education building in the center of the City of Cleveland to the East side of the city, on Quincy Avenue, near E. 105th street. The move occurred in 1974. Progress on becoming a NPR station was slowed by technical matters, including concern that WBOE's 50,000 watt signal might interfere with the TV audio of WVIZ/PBS channel 25. It was estimated by WBOE's station manager at the time that this technical issue delayed the debut of NPR in the Cleveland market by over a year.

From December 20, 1976 through December 31, 1976, WBOE increased its broadcast day until 6:30 p.m. for the airing of the popular NPR program All Things Considered. On January 1, 1977 WBOE increased to an 18-hour-per-day, 7-day-a-week schedule (6:00 a.m. to midnight). Programming for in-school use continued on school days from 8:30 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. Adult, NPR, ethnic and other programming consumed the rest of the broadcast day and all day on weekends. Locally produced programming included Yes, You Can!, a weekly feature designed to encourage adults to continue their education; Parenting, a family life series; and Elementary School Highlights.

A group known as Cleveland Public Radio, headed by lawyer Brad Norris,[26] was founded in 1976 with the goal of bring expanded NPR programming to Cleveland, which at the time was the largest U.S. city without a local fulltime NPR station. The group considered WBOE's limited NPR programming to be insufficient, and after reviewing various options concluded that the only viable solution was to assume control of WBOE and replace its school-oriented programming. However, at this time the Board of Education was unwilling to agree to this proposal.[27]

In its final years of operation, WBOE's staff included station manager Jay Robert Klein (whose five-minute weekly feature You and Your Wheels featured up-to-date information about automobiles and discussed issues pertaining to automobile transportation); coordinator Charles Siegel (who produced shows like Cavities Don't Care and The Ins and Outs of Gardening); Karl Johnson, the producer–host of the morning-drive show Thank Goodness, It's (name of day) which aired Monday–Friday from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m.; senior high school programmer Cecilia Evans, who was an award-winning Cleveland broadcaster providing theater reviews for WBOE and commercial station WERE (1300 AM); Tom Altenbernd, who was the junior high school programmer; and elementary programmer Ervine Jaworski. Technical staff included First Class engineers Bill Nelson, who died in 1976 and was replaced by Ed Shaper, Al Hrivnak and Dennis Batig (who hosted a 1950s and 1960s music show, Let The Good Times Roll). Full-time board operators and production personnel were Ted Mazurowski and Richard Shenker. Part-time personnel included John L. Basalla, Jim Stincic, and Bruce Van Valkenburg. Basalla produced Rock Concepts, and Stincic produced Sessions In Swing, using the air name "Jim Matthews".

The Cleveland school system entered a difficult financial period in the late 1970s, including the need to comply with a major court-mandated desegregation order, which eventually led to it filing for receivership.[28] Due to a teachers' strike, school programming on WBOE did not resume as scheduled in September 1978. The station's final day of regular broadcasting ended at midnight on October 7, 1978, with station manager Jay Robert Klein and Cleveland newspaper journalist Dick Feagler providing a pre-recorded eulogy.[29] In his Akron Beacon Journal column the following Wednesday, Feagler noted that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was empowered to award a $5 million (USD) grant to any deserving NPR member station that had a plan to upgrade local program offerings, while the Cleveland Board of Education had hired Lee Frischknecht—the former president of NPR—to find ways to keep WBOE functional; Frischknecht made inquires to both Cleveland Public Radio and to WVIZ as possible groups that could assume operational control of the station.[26] Despite the formal closure of WBOE, the station continued to transmit so as broadcast the Cleveland Radio Reading Service (CRRS) over its 67 kHz Subsidiary Communications Authorization (SCA) subchannel, although unlike its regular programming this could only be received by persons with special receivers.

WBOE's non-commercial license was still active, and in May 1979 the school board organized an auction to sell the station, with the minimum bid set at $200,000. Northern Ohio Public Radio, described as a two-member organization headed by Gabriel Jurasek, bid $200,000, but it was announced that the winning bid was $205,000, which came from the Cleveland Public Library. A bid by Cleveland Public Radio of $234,360.87 was ruled out-of-order "because it did not meet the minimum requirement of $200,000 payable in cash".[30] Plans were made for the station to be moved from WBOE's eastside Cleveland studios to the main library downtown, with the intention to change the call letters to WCPL, for Cleveland Public Library. An application to assign WBOE's license to the library was filed with the FCC.[31]

Prior to the purchase of WBOE by the Cleveland Public Library being consummated, WBOE's license was found to have lapsed, and thus was expired.[32] While the Cleveland Board of Education filed a license renewal application for WBOE on July 11, 1979,[33] Cleveland Public Radio decided to contest WBOE's transfer to the library, filing a competing application on October 17, 1979, to operate a station on 90.3 MHz.[34] In June 1981 the FCC announced that, because the two applications were mutually exclusive, it would have to hold a competitive hearing in order to choose between the two.[35] The remaining CRRS subchannel broadcasts were suspended in May 1982, and the station remained completely silent until fall 1984.

In the absence of WBOE, Kent State University's WKSU-FM, which carried NPR programming beginning in 1973,[36] became the de facto sole NPR member in northeast Ohio, while Cleveland earned a dubious distinction as being the only major-market city in the United States without a designated public radio outlet.[37] Due to a recent power increase, WKSU added the Cleveland area to its primary coverage, with the city receiving a city-grade signal.[38] However, WKSU lacked programming directed specifically to the immediate Cleveland/Cuyahoga County region, as its main cities are Akron and Kent; an additional power upgrade for WKSU filed with the FCC was contested by the Cleveland Public Library, even as the library system's director was not opposed to it.[39]

On September 9, 1982, the Cleveland Board of Education had before it a resolution, numbered 371-82, entitled "Facilities Agreement With Cleveland Public Radio and Cuyahoga Community College". Cleveland Public Radio finally got permission to take control of the station assets after agreeing to expand its board of directors from 24 to 31 members, adding three persons each from the Cleveland Public Library and the Cuyahoga Community College, plus one from the Board of Education for the first 10 years of the new station's existence;[32][40] in turn, the Cleveland Public Library withdrew their license application.[41] As part of the compromise, Cleveland Public Radio also agreed to provide airtime for school board news and to provide vocational training for students, and would air programming provided by Cuyahoga Community College.[32] Due to the way this arrangement was handled, the FCC dismissed the Cleveland Board of Education's license renewal application on October 18, 1982, officially deleting WBOE's license,[33] and concurrently issued Cleveland Public Radio a construction permit for WBOE's replacement,[34] which on June 20, 1983 was assigned the call letters WCPN. Prior to the start of regular programming, the Cleveland Radio Reading Service was reactivated in May 1984, again limited to persons with special receivers who could pick up the subchannel transmissions.

WCPN's current studio facilities at Playhouse Square in Downtown Cleveland, dubbed the Idea Center; the complex also houses co-owned PBS member station WVIZ and classical music outlet WCLV.

Although many NPR stations featured classical music, in Cleveland WCLV (95.5 FM) already had a classical format, so WCPN decided to adopt a jazz music format.[42] WGAR (1220 AM), by then a country music outlet, donated its entire jazz record collection to the station. A kick-off party with 1,200 people in attendance was held on August 5, 1984. WCPN began regular programming on September 8, 1984, and, following the playing of a Beatles album for testing purposes and to help people tune in to the station, made its formal debut broadcast at 10:00 p.m. with a live show featuring vocalist Mel Tormé from the Cleveland Masonic Auditorium.[43][37] The original format was "45% jazz and 55% news and public affairs",[40] and the station expanded to 24-hour service on January 1, 1985.

In 2001, WCPN merged operations with WVIZ, the PBS member station for Cleveland, to form a non-profit organization named Ideastream.[44] The two stations moved to new facilities in downtown Cleveland at Playhouse Square—dubbed the Idea Center—in the fall of 2005, and were joined by WCLV (104.9 FM) in 2010.[45][46] WCLV's owners, Radio Seaway, donated the station to Ideastream in 2011.[47]

Despite WCPN's separate history, one visible reminder of WBOE's past is in display at the Idea Center: a large Works Progress Administration (WPA) mural painted for the Cleveland Board of Education by Louis Grebenak (husband of Dorothy Grebenak), one of several WPA murals commissioned by the city in the 1930s that was restored by the Intermuseum Conservation Association, a non-profit art conservation group.[48] The WBOE mural was donated to Ideastream and publicly unveiled in the front lobby of the Idea Center in 2014 as part of WCPN's 30th anniversary.[49]

Since WCPN's establishment, programming on weekend evenings has consisted of hour-long blocks with music and discussion related to a specific ethnic group or culture—British and Irish, German, Latin, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian, and Ukrainian—which were added in as a conditional requirement for WCPN to broadcast. A 1997 attempt by the station to reduce the number of hours allocated for this ethnic programming, in order to broaden the scope of the weekend lineup, resulted in the Ohio State Legislature inserting language into the state budget specifying that the proposed moves by WCPN be rescinded; the station relented.[51][52] In recent years, the programming has been reduced to four hours on Sunday evenings.[53]