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WBOE HISTORY (UPDATE)

WBOE radio history from original documents and recordings are now online. Please visit www.clevelandmetroschools.org . Once there, look towards the right-hand side of the screen, and hover over "NEWSROOM". Then, click on "CMSD HISTORICAL ARCHIVE".

There are sections of interest: "CURRICULUM RESOURCES- audio" ... "CMSD HISTORY- Audio Archive", "WBOE VISUAL ARCHIVE - Early History",
"WBOE VISUAL ARCHIVE - Programs in the 1960s and 1970s. WBOE also ran the national educational radio drama series, "Mr. President" starring Edward Arnold. The original reel-to-reel tapes from 1952 and 1953 survive, and in 2020, a few of them were put up.

You can listen to examples, from the original 16" Electrical Transcription discs and reel-to-reel tapes in the audio archives.
These were dubbed from the original sources onto CD, and then onto this online source.

On the video archives, you may find that they scroll through the contents automatically. You can click on the image, or the button on the top left, and that should stop the scrolling if you want a more detailed look. There are arrows on the top right to manually go through the contents.

This is an authoritative history of WBOE that comes directly from original source material. This should answer questions. I hope you'll enjoy this and find it useful. Respectfully submitted.
 
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Quite a few city boards of education started radio stations in the 30s and 40s. Atlanta started WABE, New York City had WNYE, and Newark began WBGO. WBOE claims to be the first, originating in 1937 before the current FM band was established. There are quite a few more. A lot of them have been sold or converted to public stations, as was the case with WBOE. Miami Public Schools still owns WLRN, although the programming is what you'd expect from an NPR station.
 
If you go to the site, and access the visual archive of WBOE's early history, you'll first see the original Temporary license dated June 1938. The second image will be the RADIO STATION LICENSE with the term beginning on November 21, 1938. On the top right you'll see the following on this original document:
File No. BE-LED-1
Official No. 1
Call Letters WBOE
 
From 2006 through 2021-2022, a history of WBOE-FM, written by me, was available on Wikipedia. During that time, items were added that were true. At the time that 90.3 FM became WCLV, this history was deleted and replaced, minus worthy historical items, because there was little, or no, on-line place to go for verification. That has been corrected with the online source that has been offered here. I desire to see information that was deleted re-added now that there is proof that it is true as we can't get better proof than that which comes from original documents. To help with this, I am going to post the segments involved that can be used. Some of this is in the current Wikipedia article, some is not. In italics are the most important pieces.


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. 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.

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.

Suspension of operations[edit]

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 Schenker. 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".

Respectfully submitted.
 
The timeline is pretty similar to WBGO in Newark NJ. In the 70s, the station was only on the air during daytime hours (when school was in session.) The studios, located in the city's high school, had fallen into disrepair. The view was that the frequency was underutilized. A community group came up with a proposal to run the station as an NPR affiliate. The board of ed was looking to redirect the budget to the schools themselves. So a transfer of license was arranged in 1979.
 
The timeline is pretty similar to WBGO in Newark NJ. In the 70s, the station was only on the air during daytime hours (when school was in session.) The studios, located in the city's high school, had fallen into disrepair. The view was that the frequency was underutilized. A community group came up with a proposal to run the station as an NPR affiliate. The board of ed was looking to redirect the budget to the schools themselves. So, a transfer of license was arranged in 1979.
WBOE's studios were in the Woodhill-Quincy building, which was an office site. The studios were in good shape. The last day of regular broadcasting was on Saturday Oct. 7th, 1978. I was the board operator/automation operator for the first half of the day.
An image of the log for the last day should be part of the visual archive. After that, the transmitter continued to be operated as the Cleveland Society For The Blind was using the 67khz subcarrier for their radio reading service. That ceased during 1982.
 
WBOE's studios were in the Woodhill-Quincy building, which was an office site. The studios were in good shape. The last day of regular broadcasting was on Saturday Oct. 7th, 1978.

Another similar story to WBOE is WNYE in New York. It was started by the Board of Education. It too began on Apex in 1938 (the second station after WBOE), and then moved to FM in 1942. The school board transferred ownership of the station to the Mayor's Office of Media in 2004. That was a few years after the other city owned stations, WNYC-AM/FM, were sold to the WNYC Foundation.
 
In re-building the WBOE history on Wikipedia, also included previously, which would be nice to include would be the one day that WBOE ran for 24 hours. As an NPR affiliate, WBOE- 90.3 FM was on-the-air from 6:00 a.m. to midnight, 7 days a week. In the overnight hours on December 31, 1977 into January 1, 1978, from midnight until 6:00 p.m. I broadcast, live, a unique year-end music program called "The Bombs of 1977". These were good quality records that failed to become hits. I have over 2 hours of the program that I recorded onto a large reel-to-reel tape.
 
In re-building the WBOE history on Wikipedia, also included previously, which would be nice to include would be the one day that WBOE ran for 24 hours. As an NPR affiliate, WBOE- 90.3 FM was on-the-air from 6:00 a.m. to midnight, 7 days a week. In the overnight hours on December 31, 1977 into January 1, 1978, from midnight until 6:00 p.m. I broadcast, live, a unique year-end music program called "The Bombs of 1977". These were good quality records that failed to become hits. I have over 2 hours of the program that I recorded onto a large reel-to-reel tape.
OOPS! I meant midnight until 6:00 a.m. Sorry.
 
Phono (turntable) I presume. You can also use this connection to connect to a CD player or music from your smartphone.
The OP said 1940's and 1950's so that type of Phono input is not going to be able to accept a line level input like a CD player as it would overload/distort the system. Also, those phono inputs use RIAA equalization so you can't just plug anything else into them besides a phonograph and expect the correct sound. Newer phono inputs may be different depending on the receiver or newer turntables which might have their own line level outputs.
 
The OP said 1940's and 1950's so that type of Phono input is not going to be able to accept a line level input like a CD player as it would overload/distort the system. Also, those phono inputs use RIAA equalization so you can't just plug anything else into them besides a phonograph and expect the correct sound. Newer phono inputs may be different depending on the receiver or newer turntables which might have their own line level outputs.
It won't hurt to try. I have a 1956 Zenith with phono inputs and the CD player works just fine.
 
I have been looking over the history of WBOE-FM on Wikipedia. In a previous post, I shared some information that I would like to see re-added to the Wikipedia history. I'll share them, probably, one at a time so as to not overload anyone. All that I will share can be confirmed by going to www.clevelandmetroschools.org. Once there, look to your right and hover over "Newsroom". Click on "CMSD Historical Archive". The first thing that should pop up is "Curriculum Resources-Audio".

On Wikipedia, there is this: Production of in-school materials continued under coordinator Charles Siegel, with shows like Living today: Survival, It's your decision![94] and The Plain Dealer Green Thumb Club[95][96] among the offerings.

Please add "Cavities Don't Care" and "Elementary School Highlights" as both of them feature Mr. Siegel as the interviewer. Both programs can be heard on the aforementioned website. "Cavities Don't Care" is under "Curriculum Resources-Audio" and "Elementary School Highlights" (Temporarily Re-christened "Elementary School Bilights during the Bi-Centennial year of 1976), can be heard under "CMSD History - Audio Archive". He can also be heard on one of the very last series to be produced at WBOE, and that was "The Ins and Outs of Gardening". I will endeavor to get editions of that program up on the website as well.
 
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A user who tried to log in using a phone couldn't find the "NEWSROOM" link. This is because if you use a phone, a different homepage appears. So, here's how to get to the WBOE Historical Archives using a phone:
Log on, as usual, to www.clevelandmetroschools.org

Click on "MENU" on the top left.
Look down for "NEWSROOM" and click on THE LITTLE ARROW TO THE RIGHT.
Then, See "Historical Archive" and click on THE LITTLE ARROW TO THE RIGHT.
That will bring up your options. Click on whichever files you'd like to check out.
(A special note: We're rebuilding the video portions as our original host is not longer available. Luckily, that does not affect the original recordings from WBOE 90.3 FM.)

Thank you. I am committed to helping grow, and re-establish, those items that are currently missing from WBOE's history in Wikipedia now that they can be confirmed via this online source. Respectfully submitted.
 
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