Today is a special day at WKSU: Our station is celebrating its 75th birthday. That’s a lot of radio. If you’re wondering where we’ve been, how we got here, and where we’re going, you’re about to find out with “A Diamond on the Air: 75 Years of WKSU.” Listen with the player above the photo.
WKSU was founded October 2, 1950, at Kent State University by Walton D. Clarke and John Weiser, the first station manager, at 88.1 FM, with an antenna attached to a 50-foot pole. It was an outgrowth of the experimental audio laboratory that started in 1941. Kent State speech students would create short blocks of programming to run on existing AM stations.
Weiser’s successor was John Perry, station manager from 1972 until 1998. In 2020, he reflected on those first decades.
"If students didn't show up, you just kind of shut the station down or found somebody in the hallway who could run something," he said.
Little exists in the archive from those early years. One piece that survived is a 1963 report from President John F. Kennedy's funeral.
“Women wept; men wept," said student reporter Bob Woods. “On this day of national sadness, nowhere was it felt more intensely than here in Washington.”
In 1965, Kent State English professor Robert Ehrlich was interviewed by Craig Stevens for "The Stevens Report." Ehrlich had attended the civil rights marches in Alabama.
"Looking at those billy clubs [and] the hate and the general disgust in the eyes of these men was a very frightening experience," he said.
The turbulence of the era hit home on May 4, 1970. After days of protests and simmering tensions over the Vietnam War, the National Guard opened fire on students, killing four and wounding nine. WKSU reporters covered the protests, the aftermath and the annual memorials for the students.
A year after the shootings, NBC News commentator David Brinkley appeared on campus for a symposium about journalism.
"In this [adversarial] relationship between press and politician, it might be said in passing that the contest is highly unequal," he said. "The press has no power to force anyone to do anything; the politicians do. There are numerous countries in the world where the politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. There is no country in the world where the press has seized power and muzzled the politicians."
In 2000, the station aired an award-winning documentary, "Remembering Kent State 1970."
By 1974, WKSU began broadcasting "All Things Considered," which had gained prominence by airing the Senate Watergate hearings, live and in their entirety.
At night, "Fresh Air" presented progressive music from 1971-1981.
WKSU also produced jazz ("Jazzmasters") and folk programs - such as the ones hosted by Jim Blum. However, one view in Northeast Ohio was that WKSU was too closely focused on Summit, Portage and Stark counties. In the late 1970s, with the formation of the group Cleveland Public Radio, a movement was underway to create a station covering more of Cuyahoga, Lorain, Lake and Medina counties.
For a time, the station owned by Cleveland's public schools, WBOE, aired some NPR programming. But it was shut down in 1978 amidst budget turmoil. Cleveland Public Radio then waged a years-long campaign that finally netted the WBOE frequency, 90.3 FM, reborn as WCPN. In 1994, David C. Barnett looked back at the battle to bring public radio to the city.
Both stations spent the next three decades as competitors, covering everything from the AIDS crisis to the Challenger explosion to the pennant-winning Cleveland Indians to the departing Cleveland Browns.
As the ‘90s wore on, WKSU moved to a new home on the campus of Kent State University.
At the dawn of a new century, WCPN was preparing for change: In 2001, the boards of WVIZ and WCPN voted to consolidate. The new Ideastream moved to its current home in Playhouse Square in 2005. In the following decade, WCLV would become part of Ideastream, followed by WKSU in 2021.
It's taken the efforts of hundreds of people to put our stations on the air and keep them there since 1950. We couldn't do that without the support of people in Northeast Ohio. Thank you for supporting public media radio for the past 75 years and for listening with open hearts, open ears and open minds.
