About 200 students, community members, alumni and former college radio workers protested silently Tuesday at Cleveland State University, demanding the university and Ideastream Public Media return former campus radio station WCSB to student control.
After the silent protest, Alison Bomgardner, WCSB's former general manager, said the university, Ideastream and the university's Center for Campus Engagement failed students and the broader community, destroying a beloved asset that's been around for almost 50 years.
"They took away every opinion and viewpoint, not just liberal opinions and viewpoint," Bomgardner said. "We have conservative people if you can believe that too, but ultimately that's what matters. We were the sounding board for everything and we cared about everything. We cared about disagreeing and coming to conclusions together. We cared about community and still continue to advocate for a new and greater community that was WCSB, but now could be (called) ex-CSB. We might not have a transmitter, we might not have a voice right now, but we have to keep hope."
The protest comes after Cleveland State University's board of trustees and Ideastream Public Media's board each voted to approve a public service operating agreement Friday in which Ideastream would bring its JazzNEO streaming service to WCSB's airwaves, ending student-run programming. Cleveland State retains the Federal Communication Commission license.
Many at the protest decried the rapid change in control of the station and the lack of advanced notice. The programming was switched over to jazz abruptly, Bomgardner said, as staff was told in a meeting with CSU officials Friday. Soon after, both CSU and Ideastream Public Media released public statements about the deal to the community and their staff. Police were there as students left the station that same day.
CSU did not respond to a request for comment on the protest Tuesday. In an interview, Yvette Cook Darby, chief development and marketing officer for Ideastream Public Media, said the organization did not call police on the students. She said the sudden programming change and lack of advanced notice to students or the community was due to non-disclosure agreements signed by both organizations as a standard part of negotiations with terrestrial radio operations. The agreement was not official until each board voted Friday morning.
Heather Young, a CSU alumna who once worked for WCSB, held back tears as she attended the protest.
"This is a gut punch," Young said. "WCSB changed my life in 1982. I'm 55 now and I went to Cleveland State because of the radio station. This is breaking my heart. I lost a best friend."
Sean Watterson, co-owner of local bar and music venue The Happy Dog, and Adam Spektor, who works at Happy Dog, both attended the protest. They said they were big supporters of the station.
"To take those community voices off is unjustifiable and there's been no good explanation from the administration, no communication from any of the other partners that made it happen," Watterson said. "It's taken away musical voices. It's taking away community, it's taking away the ethnic community shows and there's just no justification for it."
Spektor formerly worked at college radio station WRUW at Case Western Reserve University.
"The argument I've seen is, 'Oh it's superfluous. Oh college radio isn't worth anything anymore,'" Spektor said. "My counter argument is, unless you're one of those sorts of people with bigotry and hatred in your heart to the extent that you live in a different reality, college radio is for everybody. WCSB is and was for everybody and it's a rare asset that is just increasingly rare in this hyper-commodified, hyper-centralized, you know, culture that we live in. It was a million voices at once and there's very little like that anymore, anywhere."
Keith Miller attended the protest. He ran a show on WCSB for 40 years called "Not What You Think (Whatever)." He said he struggled to hold back tears as he watched the protest.
"It was underground music of psychedelic, progressive rock in a wide variety ... also I spoke about trying to become aware of oneness of, within each of us, and inside and outside all of us, the actual reality of being," Miller said.
Miller said the station was deeply important to him and many others in Cleveland. That includes Mark Keffer, a Cleveland resident who listened for more than 30 years. He said listening to WCSB was a unique part of his experience living in Cleveland.
"This is completely different and it's incredibly important and Cleveland stands out nationally as a serious center for college radio," Keffer said.
Cook Darby said Ideastream has made room for several programs coming from WCSB.
"We have several nationality programs on our HD4 (high definition) channel, where we've made room for three additional programs coming from WCSB," she said. "Unfortunately, we don't have a space or a bandwidth to take on all of their programming, and we are hoping that CSU is working with some of the students to find a place for their programs."
Cook Darby said the agreement between Ideastream and CSU allows for new paid internships. CSU student Callum Holland, a freshman who attended the protest, questioned how internships will replicate the unique experiences students would have working for WCSB. He himself had been hoping to join the station.
"How on earth is the experience of five, 10, even 20 interns, how on earth will that replace the richness of the shows but also, the experience that the college students gain (at WCSB)?" he said.
Multiple signs at the protest referenced distaste for the JazzNEO programming replacing the variety of shows at WCSB. Cook Darby disputed the idea that JazzNEO is "smooth jazz," or something that has a lack of interest.
"The jazz that we run, if anyone would care to stop in or listen, is not what you categorize as smooth jazz, I would say, by any definition," Cook Darby said. "But what I will say to you is, we did not make that decision. CSU made the decision to make a change with the station. Because we have jazz on high definition, we would love to have a jazz analog station, because in a recent study about a year and a half ago, we found out that people in the local area would love to have a traditional jazz station, and we didn't have one."
She also disputed that a recent $1 million donation to JazzNEO from Cleveland philanthropists Char and Chuck Fowler had anything to do with the agreement with CSU.
"Their contribution was designated specifically for building out and equipping a studio for JazzNEO within the Idea Center," Cook Darby said. The Idea Center is the Playhouse Square building where Ideastream is headquartered.
"There's no connection of any kind between that gift and what recently occurred with the PSOA (public service operating agreement) between Ideastream Public Media and Cleveland State University," she said. "That gift played no role whatsoever in the implementation of this agreement. Two totally separate transactions."
Cook Darby did not directly answer whether Ideastream approached CSU about the move, or vice-versa.
"Two organizations came together in a partnership," she said.
Ideastream's executive management did not have any editorial input into, and did not review, this story.
