Why would they suddenly be more concerned with "liability" than in the past?
Unless...
Oh, never mind, we've been thru this before and people didn't take it seriously. I don't get this argument, I really don't. Fewer people passionate about and engaged in creating interesting radio is a negative for radio. WCSB was paying its way and there'd been no complaints filed to anyone's knowledge.
I don't buy that there's no value in what they did simply because you can't get paid most places for playing music. Have we basically given up on the idea of culture? Of there being a place for anything that isn't easily described or strictly "professional?" I'm accepting the reality that this has and is happening, the closure of college stations. Some people like communities around music. Some people value human beings who know something about a genre or scene or era curating that and sharing it with them. A few people at stations like KEXP and KCRW get paid for it. Others do it for the love and passion. And I don't cheer when the airwaves become just that much more sterile. I like jazz. I like well programmed stations playing the hits. I also like stations like WCSB and KALX. "Safe" radio is not all there should be if we want to hold onto a shred of the concept that the public should have some share in their airwaves.
What I don't understand is why several parties here expect that it should be accepted, or that there should be no pushback in how it was handled. For some reason, this is really giving me pause. One can accept realities and not cheer on those who have no tact or respect in how they handle business. One can accept that there's fewer college stations left and also not actively shrug and yawn when one which had done fine (to my knowledge, WCSB was never the source of unrest or FCC action) and has an audience who at least cares enough about it to create not insignificant amounts of comment on a forum usually very tech savvy (Reddit) is treated with no respect for its legacy or contributions to Cleveland culture.
I get that a number of you have done more time in this business than I have. I get that we're all supposed to be jaded about things. But seeing people in 2025 even care about this station to the degree they do, makes how they were treated unusually irritating to me.
Maybe I'm just tired of people having more reasons to not care about radio. Or people who are bigger, in the process of doing their business, not giving at least the minimum respect to the people that came before them and kept the station going for 30 years. I don't like it when commercial broadcasters do it, I don't like it when EMF does it (though if you've noticed, EMF generally lets them say farewell, so in that respect they're actually better than the team I usually root for, the public broadcasters.)
All of this could have been avoided and wasn't. And to excuse it after the fact, and start to suggest that somehow the station (without proof) was "obscene" or somehow creating a liability for the school is accusing people of misconduct after the fact. They lost their station, and it was a vibrant creative outlet for at least a non-invisible number of the Cleveland music community. Give them their mourning period at least before suggesting they were bad broadcasters.
I recognize realities. I also live in them enough where I recognize the value of there being alternatives. Seeing one that didn't do anything wrong, treated badly, is an affront to my sense of basic dignity and how human beings deal with each other. Especially if they want a relationship with the students and to educate them further in media, maybe start out with a little more class. Ideastream has screwed themselves out of a number of donors with this, which even in cold numbers was a dumb move.
