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WCSB - college station that flipped to jazz

TheBigA said:
It's good that the lawsuit didn't name Ideastream as a defendant. In the weeks after the decision, they hosted a TV special on the subject where the student GM was invited to present her side. Sadly, the students have targeted Ideastream and attacked their social media sites. The lawsuit doesn't apologize for that. The university and Ideastream have done nothing to interfere with the students expressing themselves. If anything, the university has been overly patient with the students. Anyone else would have called in parents for a discussion about proper student behavior.
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Bloomberg did an interview with the Cleveland Stater and did say some postings and rhetoric were turned over to the FBI:

Bloomberg addresses WCSB shutdown, funding woes, loss of international students and a tough semester as president | Cleveland Stater

In a wide-ranging discussion, Cleveland State President Laura Bloomberg, Ph.D., explained how the administration sees the shuttering of WCSB, how CSU will respond if ICE comes to campus, SB1, the budget, and what matters to her in the job.
clevelandstater.com clevelandstater.com
Following the announcement, Bloomberg was faced with student protests on campus, comments on social media, questions from students and even city council members sharing their frustration during council meetings. The pushback in some cases was not civil. “It surprised me some of the pretty vicious feedback,” Bloomberg said. “I mean, hard feedback is hard feedback. Things that you have to turn over to the FBI because they're so threatening, that's unfortunate.”
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Yabadabado1 said:
If it was so ethical, why was it done behind closed doors? If they had nothing to hide, should have been open meetings, etc.
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If the staff had known in advance, they would not have taken the news well. I think the board understood the situation.

They weren't hiding anything. They needed to get the staff off university property without any vandalism. That's why university police were there.

We see it all the time in radio. The staff is the last to know. They get the news, and then they leave immediately.
 
TheBigA said:
If the staff had known in advance, they would not have taken the news well. I think the board understood the situation.

They weren't hiding anything. They needed to get the staff off university property without any vandalism. That's why university police were there.

We see it all the time in radio. The staff is the last to know. They get the news, and then they leave immediately.
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The one station I was at, when the news leaked out you had the morning guy literally leave in the middle of his shift, threw all his stuff in a box and walked out. The rest did their little acts of subversion [snarky comments on air, no vandalism] and most were gone by the end of week one, sent T&Rs out and were hired elsewhere [me included, although since I was the last recent hire, I behaved myself]. Two left at the end and was in the studio for the last three hours with my friend and station edict at the time was "no playing of album cuts of full length songs" so......last two hours longest album cuts he could find and his rational was "What are they gonna do, fire me?" Midnight, station switched off, walked out gave keys to old owners/PD who turned and gave them to new owners. No thanks or anything to the DJ as we walked out into the night.
I never understood the mentality of DJs that basically sabotaged themselves or their stations. Didn't they realize that word of their actions might get out to other radio people looking to hire and passed them by because of those antics? But I guess some may rather hire the devil they know then take a chance on someone new who might do even worse when it's there time to get canned.
 
Yabadabado1 said:
I never understood the mentality of DJs that basically sabotaged themselves or their stations. Didn't they realize that word of their actions might get out to other radio people looking to hire and passed them by because of those antics?
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For most of these non-students, this was their only shot at being on the radio. Once it was gone, they're back to their regular jobs and regular lives. Not very glamorous. Nobody wants the fun to end. But these colleges are done with owning radio stations. This wasn't the first, and it won't be the last.
 
TheBigA said:
If the staff had known in advance, they would not have taken the news well. I think the board understood the situation.

They weren't hiding anything. They needed to get the staff off university property without any vandalism. That's why university police were there.

We see it all the time in radio. The staff is the last to know. They get the news, and then they leave immediately.
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If you look at Dr. Bloomberg's aforementioned Cleveland Stater interview, the staff was there without any authorization whatsoever. Their keycard access was revoked overnight and were let in by university police, the same ones who later escorted them out. She also made another interesting allegation.
Another aspect of the closure that upset community members were the CSU police officers who appeared at the station shortly after the president’s Zoom call with the station’s student staff.

“First of all, we did not know that students had access to it (the station),” Bloomberg said. The students gained access after contacting the CSU Police Department that same morning when they arrived to host their regularly scheduled programming to find their keycards were not working. “When we knew that students had been granted access to it – so there was CSU equipment and material being removed from the radio station. I pause because I don't want to point fingers or lay blame, no harm, no foul,” Bloomberg said. “We're not calling this theft, but we are saying you can't remove, even when you're extremely upset, you cannot remove things that do not belong to you from a space.”

“And so, that was a part of it, just to monitor what was happening in that space,” Bloomberg said. “There's a lot of valuable equipment there. There are beautiful archives of albums that will be cataloged, that will stay here forever, that will be honored and treasured, but they do not belong to individual students.”
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Rusty Muck said:
If you look at Dr. Bloomberg's aforementioned Cleveland Stater interview, the staff was there without any authorization whatsoever. Their keycard access was revoked overnight and were let in by university police, the same ones who later escorted them out. She also made another interesting allegation.
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She's right. I read somewhere Bloomberg met with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the lead-up to the closure. I wondered if at some point the archives of the station might become part of the Hall, so that people could see some of what was collected there. I hope so.

Cleveland has a lot of history. It needs to be preserved. The Hall of Fame is a great place for it.
 
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TheBigA said:
If the staff had known in advance, they would not have taken the news well. I think the board understood the situation.

They weren't hiding anything. They needed to get the staff off university property without any vandalism. That's why university police were there.

We see it all the time in radio. The staff is the last to know. They get the news, and then they leave immediately.
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I've done more than one format change where the new air staff is in some motel rooms waiting for our call. After the old staff was escorted out with their severance checks, in about 5 minutes the new staff was filing into the building, carrying the logs and carts for the new format. When the next song ended, the new format started and the jock for that shift came on as if they had been doing it there for years.
 
TheBigA said:
She's right. I read somewhere Bloomberg met with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the lead-up to the closure. I wondered if at some point the archives of the station might become part of the Hall, so that people could see some of what was collected there. I hope so.
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The HoF printed archives are kept at Case-Western Reserve University for curation. I never asked where any audio material is kept.
 
TheBigA said:
Here's another article on the lawsuit.

www.insideradio.com

Cleveland State Student Station Sues Over Shutdown.

A group tied to Cleveland State University’s student-run station WCSB has filed a lawsuit claiming the university and its president violated free speech, open meetings, and public records laws by
www.insideradio.com www.insideradio.com
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It's largely sourced from WKYC's story, but they put the intent of the lawsuit in as the kicker:
The lawsuit seeks to unwind the agreement and restore WCSB’s student-run operations.
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That it is a goal completely based in a fantasy land makes me wonder just how much money the "Friends of XCSB" are incinerating on this endeavor. For their sake the presiding judge should throw this out without prejudice.
 
radiofollower said:
Yes, important point. Most of the people on the air were not students.
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It's not like they just wandered in off the street, picked up a mic and started their own show. Someone who was "OFFICIALLY' on staff or a student there that they knew let them into the building to do whatever. It should have been addressed at that time by whomever....if there even was....someone in charge of the station, PD, GM or even some university higher up honcho. You can't put toothpaste back into the tube once it's been squeezed out. [Well, you could if you cut off the end of the tube, scrape it up and stuff it back in there but it's not gonna be pretty.]
When I was a DJ, I'd have so-called friends say "Hey, let me come in and "help" you" or "Let me pick the records" or "I can fill in for you if you're sick, on vacation or whatever". My response was always "It's not MY station to let you in to do whatever you want" or "No thanks. I wish to remain employed there." If they got pissed off, I'd quickly lose them as a "friend" because at that point, they're not.
 
Yabadabado1 said:
It's not like they just wandered in off the street, picked up a mic and started their own show. Someone who was "OFFICIALLY' on staff or a student there that they knew let them into the building to do whatever. It should have been addressed at that time by whomever....if there even was....someone in charge of the station, PD, GM or even some university higher up honcho. You can't put toothpaste back into the tube once it's been squeezed out. [Well, you could if you cut off the end of the tube, scrape it up and stuff it back in there but it's not gonna be pretty.]
When I was a DJ, I'd have so-called friends say "Hey, let me come in and "help" you" or "Let me pick the records" or "I can fill in for you if you're sick, on vacation or whatever". My response was always "It's not MY station to let you in to do whatever you want" or "No thanks. I wish to remain employed there." If they got pissed off, I'd quickly lose them as a "friend" because at that point, they're not.
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The university let it be student run. The university ran out of discretionary funding. They decided that the station was not worth ongoing support, and pulled the plug.

Ford discontinued the Edsel... it was their business decision to do so, not that of the assembly line workers.
 
On another note I've noticed that 89.3 is noticeably louder than other stations, even in the car. On some of my analog radios it's hard to tune in and the sound is distorted, not as good as their HD.
By now I would have thought the Ideastream tech would have been all over the audio chain and adjusted it to their standards. Or perhaps the agreement lets them program it but does not allow them access to the transmitter. Or maybe it's some multipath thing unique to my location.
 
At this point I think I'd rather it go to a religious than IdeaStream so I'll take that as a win if it does happen. Paging Radio U Columbus

The attorney they hired is Brian Bardwell, a free speech specialist who probably knows the ins and outs of these outs more than this forum combined (myself included) so maybe there's some merit to it. He won a case loosing restrictions
In September, Bardwell won a high-profile free-speech case that led to the state loosening loosen restrictions on personalized license plates after U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster ruled that such restrictions are unconstitutional.

Breaking: WCSB Takes CSU to Court
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Honestly ask yourself. If this was a license plate forum, would some of you think restricting the license plate wasn't free speech? Maybe, maybe not, but apply that to what the exact same lawyer thinks about W/XCSB, CSU, etc
 
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Santa fe said:
On another note I've noticed that 89.3 is noticeably louder than other stations, even in the car. On some of my analog radios it's hard to tune in and the sound is distorted, not as good as their HD.
By now I would have thought the Ideastream tech would have been all over the audio chain and adjusted it to their standards. Or perhaps the agreement lets them program it but does not allow them access to the transmitter. Or maybe it's some multipath thing unique to my location.
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The transmitter is on top of the Rhodes Tower so accessibility may be an issue. (Isn't part of it fully mothballed to begin with?)
 
inter1097 said:
Honestly ask yourself. If this was a license plate forum, would some of you think restricting the license plate wasn't free speech? Maybe, maybe not, but apply that to what the exact same lawyer thinks about W/XCSB, CSU, etc
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This is not about free speech. The students can say whatever they want. But the courts have ruled that owners are responsible for the content on radio stations. The owners are responsible for the operation of radio stations. Radio station owners have the power to make changes in the operation of the radio stations. They can change formats, and they don't have to consult with staff to change formats. The students have been free to make false and even libelous statements about the university, the president, and Ideastream. The university is not obligated to provide a broadcast radio station for its students to have free speech.

The students say it is a "community radio station." That is false. The radio station is owned by the college, and is intended to be a student activity. The vast majority of the people involved in the station are not students. They are trespassing on university property, and utilizing resources intended for use by students. The university never approved such a thing. The intent of the arrangement with Ideastream is to provide an educational experience for students. The university has no obligation to the non-students. The students had no contract with the university requiring it to provide a radio studio or broadcast facility so they can play their favorote music.

From the beginning the university has advocated the radio club start an online station. That is typically what happens in these situations. Multiple colleges around the country have shut down student stations. The students simply use current technology to begin an online radio station. The university has even said that the students can keep any money they raised for use in starting the online station. So far they haven't done that. All they've done is insist that the university must reverse its decision and return the radio station to student operation. The university has engaged in a legal and binding contract with Ideastream. As owners of the license, they are allowed to make such arrangements for the use of university property. It happens all the time.
 
inter1097 said:
At this point I think I'd rather it go to a religious than IdeaStream so I'll take that as a win if it does happen. Paging Radio U Columbus
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So you're conceding that the XCSB Crowd cannot win (by winning, getting "their station" back) and you just want the signal to go to a Godcaster because to hell with public media.
inter1097 said:
The attorney they hired is Brian Bardwell, a free speech specialist who probably knows the ins and outs of these outs more than this forum combined (myself included) so maybe there's some merit to it. He won a case loosing restrictions

Honestly ask yourself. If this was a license plate forum, would some of you think restricting the license plate wasn't free speech? Maybe, maybe not, but apply that to what the exact same lawyer thinks about W/XCSB, CSU, etc
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Who's paying him? He's not doing this pro bono. If Alison Bomgardner and the Friends of XCSB are paying him and exhausting their funds, then they're not only playing themselves, they're engaging in sore loser tactics.
 
Rusty Muck said:
So you're conceding that the XCSB Crowd cannot win (by winning, getting "their station" back) and you just want the signal to go to a Godcaster because to hell with public media.

Who's paying him? He's not doing this pro bono. If Alison Bomgardner and the Friends of XCSB are paying him and exhausting their funds, then they're not only playing themselves, they're engaging in sore loser tactics.
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I never said they could get the station back Nathan, maybe others did but I did not. in fact I said I was fine with them going to internet streaming. Do I see value in the 89.3 signal? Of course. Ask WOXY out of Cincy and CD101/102.5/92.9 went when they both tried streaming only. but that doesn't' correlate with me thinking they are going to get it back, but I suppose someone that got pissed that I made an inside joke for other fans of WCSB wouldn't get that. with them losing the station and protesting, no matter their chances of getting the station back If this lawyer is a mad genius that can get it back (and of course he's getting paid somehow) then so be it. Maybe they'll get an out of court settlement.

I never seen anyone so upset about a station that they weren't ever going to listen to anyway. Didn't you tell us the radio community is toxic now? Yet you're still complaining about something that will never effect you.
 


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