I can say for a fact that's more then likely true. The "powers-that-be" donated a station I worked at to Family Radio so they could get a tax deduction. I think the only listeners it has are the spiders spinning their webs all over the transmitter shack where the laptop it comes in on resides.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
WCSB Flips to Jazz
- Thread starter Delete My Account
- Start date
I think you mean shareholders.
Many of the students don't use the soccer field, Wolstein Center, on campus student centers, etc. So should they tell CSU "I'm reducing the amount of my tuition that I pay to you because I don't plan on EVER using any of those facilities." ? That's sorta the implied consent that you're going to pay for things you might never use. I can remember some friend's college had an actual bar on campus [when the legal drinking age was 18 for beer only] because their thinking was that it was better to keep them drinking on campus than have them possibly driving around town drunk and crashing into something or killing themselves or others. You would have the hard-core non-drinkers bitching that THEY shouldn't have to be paying for a bar on campus, even though the students weren't getting their drinks for free. The bar went away after they upped the legal drinking age to 21.
Once again, there are more NON-STUDENTS involved in WCSB than actual full time students. Only 25 students are involved with the station. That's a lot fewer than use any of the other campus properties. It's a very expensive club. That's what it's supposed to be: a club. Not a job.
So what? There were still STUDENTS involved and, I assume, taking other classes at CSU. And so you're saying that anyone involved in a campus station anywhere is in a club? Sheesh, I think some of them were thinking they'd be training to get a job in the broadcasting industry eventually, not "Oh boy, when I graduate I can go out and start my own radio station club!"
And I don't know why you're post "echoed" twice when I went to reply.
No. That's how the CSU defines it. It's a club, paid for by the student activity fee. It may be different at other colleges.
The station is not tied to an academic program at the university. So no, they didn't receive college credit, and no it wasn't job training. It was a club. The student GM was very honest and said she's not even majoring in communications.
I can tell you as someone who spent 4 years on the air at my college's student station, NONE of that experience was helpful in getting a job in the industry. If anything, it's a negative. Because there simply aren't any commercial stations that allow you to play your personal music taste on the air. That's why they're better off getting practical experience from an internship at Ideastream than playing radio at WCSB.
No call letters are required for internet stand-alone stations. But if the staff is looking to tie their internet station to the old days, XCSB sounds just right.
Right now, I wouldn't believe anything that comes out of any CSU administrative figure's piehole. All the backroom shenanigans are slowly coming to light. I'd trust a used car dealer more than any one of them.
Granted, the horse is out of the barn and has galloped off to browner pastures and may end up as roadkill so the students should either transfer somewhere else where they will be sorely disabused of the notion that they can do whatever they want. And the volunteers may have a better chance of becoming Trump's personal spray tan assistant/wig wrangler then getting a station to let them do any "volunteering". Obviously the screaming and wailing hasn't gotten them anywhere so suck it up, shut up and move along. Eventually, someone will get fed up with them and may slap them so hard it'll take their shadow three months to catch up with their body.
The XCSB gang better get an online going -- even if it is out of somebody's house for the time being -- before they lose their audience and their staff goes their separate ways.
Actually the station was called in WCSU when it aired only in campus buildings before it went on the airwaves in 1976, but because Central State University already had it, they went with CSB, the B being for "broadcasting"
it seems pretty clear they already can't do whatever they want at CSU, why would they need to go anywhere else?
The volunteers were almost all alumni. You generally could only join the station as a student and then stay on as alumni. Former members could usually come back after absences, but usually you couldn't just join off the street unless you were an ethnic show host. And the ethnic shows helped meet FCC criteria of "serving the community" so you need the ethnic shows.
There are alumni at WJCU and WRUW that play a bigger and more recognized role there than the ones at WCSB. Your comments implying the members of the station should be deserving of physical violence are completely uncalled for. This was a community resource they provided. Public tax dollars go to fund public universities. Unlike the private schools, CSU - as a state institution - has more of an obligation to the community than Case or JCU, so don't act like people involved with the station either as members or supporters are being entitled when we all know the truly entitled people are the ones with the power to just jettison a beloved cultural institution and treat its staff and its listeners like they are completely worthless. You don't have to like WCSB or its staff or the way they've handled themselves, but you're sounding just as dismissive as Bloomberg and Ideastream. There has been overwhelming community support for WCSB in the face of this decision. The Plain Dealer, the Scene, the other stations in town like WRUW, WJCU and WOVU, the Cleveland City council, local organizations and businesses and artists, college radio stations around the country have all spoken in support of WCSB. Stop gaslighting like it's just a couple of spoiled losers.
And to whoever claimed WCSB had a tiny audience, that's just incorrect and you cite no actual evidence. You sound like Kevin Martin citing his bogus 'study' that said everyone wanted a Jazz station (that only plays a limited style of jazz). Just because the kind of people who listened to the station included marginalized persons, starving artists and non conformists does not make the numbers any less valid. And it completely ignores the overwhelming listenership that the ethnic shows had, all but one of which remain without a home.
Last edited:
Keep in mind that there are many ways to serve the community besides airing ethnic shows. My college station, which also began in the mid-70s, did the exact same thing. But if you notice, not many other non-com stations run ethnic shows. One other way might be to utilize university resources in ways to benefit the community. But the FCC has been pretty open in the way it handles the public service responsibilities. Back in the 70s, stations were required to complete community ascertainment surveys, and implement programming around those surveys. Those requirements were eliminated in the late 70s, and other public service requirements have also been repealed.
That's up to the university to decide, not a radio station. What we're seeing across the board at state and private colleges is a back to basics approach. There was a time, back in the 60s and 70s, when colleges did more community outreach. In the last 20 years, I've noticed that commitment has been curtailed. In some cases completely eliminated. Budgets have been cut, and there's obviously been a big financial issue at CSU. If you broaden the picture, the federal government has also been cutting back on aid to education. So this concept of educational institutions having an "obligation" to the community is not the way things are anymore.
That's fantastic, and perhaps at some point, the station should have sought to reincorporate as a community station rather than as a university station. We've seen that happen at many other colleges, where the decision has been made to no longer fund college radio. Perhaps the city might be willing to take on the expense of housing and operating a radio station, the way the Cleveland Board of Education once did. It's pretty clear the university has decided it no longer wants to bear the expense of the station. That's why they did this deal with Ideastream. They may have said it was "revenue neutral," but that's not really true. Ideastream will now pay all operational expenses for the station. The money for it will come from the community, not the university. That's an important factor. It's pretty clear that the university doesn't want to devote any of its resources towards operating a radio station. If this deal with Ideastream is invalidated for some reason, the other option is to sell it. But I don't expect anyone to force the university to continue to pay for a student run broadcast radio station. Regardless of the public support.
While alumni do play prominent roles at both WJCU and WRUW, it terms of numbers, there is nowhere near as many volunteers on either station as WCSB. WRUW has a ration that must be maintained between students vs volunteers which skews somewhere around 65-35...not sure whether that policy is place at WJCU, but it sure sounds like students during the day with volunteers filling some night slots.
BTW-JazzNEO plays a much wider range of jazz than WCSB, which confines almost of all of its jazz programming to "avant-garde" artists, whereas you'll hear jazz from pretty much all eras on NEO...they don't hit the avant stuff (need to be realistic about driving away audience). All the more reason WCSB is needed-stations like this can fill the gap.
It's an interesting topic that hasn't been discussed in this thread. I'm familiar with two popular non-commercial jazz stations. One is WBGO in Newark, and the other is KKJZ in Long Beach. The latter station is owned by Cal State University, but operated by Global Jazz, a non profit owned by Mt. Wilson Broadcasters. Both of those stations play a wide range of jazz, with the more melodic traditional music during the day, and the avant garde at night. They stick with the more traditional jazz because that's what its membership wants. I imagine there will come a time when the membership in Cleveland will take a more active role in the direction of the music.
There is a jazz station in Detroit that I believe is listener supported and there is a legendary jazz station in Toronto as well. And WKHR plays some jazz unless they have tweaked their playlist since NEO Jazz came on.
While it's been many years since WCUY was jazz and Dave Hawthorne on WJW and Tom Brown on WHK (right after Mad Daddy) spun jazz tunes it's never completely disappeared from the dial.
While it's been many years since WCUY was jazz and Dave Hawthorne on WJW and Tom Brown on WHK (right after Mad Daddy) spun jazz tunes it's never completely disappeared from the dial.
It's up the the university whether or not they would want to give up the license for it to be used as a community station and I don't believe they wanted to go in that direction. There have been attempts like this but they have all failed.
The lockdown made it difficult to recruit when they were locked out of the building for 15 months which reduced student numbers and caused many problems. WCSB also had several rotations where a DJ only did one show a month which increased non student membership numbers, but did not take up extra space on the schedule.
WRUW has many executive staff positions filled by community members. The Promotions director at WRUW has been the same woman for over a decade. WCSB's executive staff has always been exclusively student run. Having non students in leadership positions seems like a bigger conflict to the idea of student-run than if there are a bunch of non students doing shows. Many of those overnight shows on WRUW are pre recorded shows done by volunteers who already have a daytime show.
Playing numbers games is grasping at straws. At the end of the day, the people running the stations are in charge of making sure the station is producing content that people want to listen to and interact with and donate to the station. This is the kind of management experience that you simply will not get as in intern at JazzNEO. It's not about getting a job in radio, it's about being able to put having done all the behind the scenes work on your resume. Fundraising, networking with venues, putting on events, interpersonal skills, etc it goes on and on all the things the students learn with hands on experience, or as CSU likes to say, "engaged learning".
Without the legacy shows done by alumni, the continuity would be lost. Nobody wants to tune in all day to listen to kids discover music that was mainstream 30 years ago. You need a balance. You also need the alumni as they serve as mentors to the students. You need the alumni to let a student know when they're playing something, that while new to them, was actually a mainstream top 40 hit years ago. Again, there are an awful lot of non students on WRUW all day long. So we can play numbers games or we can accept that all of the big three college stations have significant non student membership.
Traditionally the students at WCSB alone are the ones who decide who gets to join next and for many years it was about being choosy for the sake of the sound of the station. I mean, if I went to CSU that doesn't guarantee me the right to join the choir or join the basketball team. They only want the best, so did WCSB. That was thrown out the window for the past few years and the listeners noticed a drop in quality.
WJCU has an Asian show, a Lithuanian show, an Italian show, a Polish show, a Hungarian show, an Armenian show, a Latin show, a Celtic/Irish show, a French show, a Korean show and a Jewish show. Sunday 7am-10pm is ethnic alone. WRUWs selections are much more limited. That said you're nitpicking here. Either way the station has to do public service and most of the ethnic shows that WCSB had were legacy programs where the shows remained even as the hosts changed. This was the established way that WCSB did part of the public service requirements and for some unknown reason you're arguing that they should have done it some other way. Those ethnic shows all had large followings. Playing music for various diasporas on a music station seems like a good way to fulfill those requirements. This is really a non argument but you're making it anyway.
This is where you're uninformed as to how things were paid for. That antenna that Ideastream is now using: paid for by WCSB donors and a grant from the College Radio Foundation. Most of the equipment in the studio: paid for by donations. Many of the records in the library: donated by record stores, listeners' personal collections and radiothon. There was a yearly radiothon that was used to cover costs and run events. The university paid the students, THEIR STUDENTS a small stipend, the equivalent of a student an on campus university job. They kept the lights on and gave the station the space. The amount of money the university was spending on the station was a drop in the bucket and an amount that opponents of the station are deliberately misrepresenting. If it was about money, they would have sold the license for at least a million dollars like some other stations have done. In a market like Cleveland with no open frequencies, that license would go for a lot. Instead they let Ideastream take over while CSU kept the license.
If they had actually sold the license outright, and said, yeah it's about the money, I don't think people would be as angry, because CSU's financial issues and decreasing enrollment is well known. But they basically just gave away the station for nothing.
Again, the resources they put into the station were minor, with most costs being paid by the donors to the station. CSU just wanted to make a deal with Ideastream because rich people make deals that are mutually beneficial for one another and they gladly do so at the expense of the rest of us.
Bloomberg gets a seat on the board, Ideastream gets that million from the Fowlers that was probably contingent on getting a frequency. Ideastream gets to further its monopoly of the non commerical airwaves and CSU gets to further its apparent mission to become a soulless diploma factory by ridding itself of anything that gave the school character and made it fun and unique. John Carroll said NO to Ideastream trying to take WJCU because they understand its importance to the community and the students. CSU on the other hand is run by people that don't gave a damn about the community, and certainly not its own students despite claiming otherwise.
It's a BIG club and we ain't in it. The "public" airwaves go to the highest bidder.
Shareholders are owners. A “share” is a fractional piece of a corporation.
They wanted to work with a professional operation that would provide internships for the students. They could have sold the license to anyone, but it would not have come with internships for students. Retaining the license gives them leverage with the operator. Ideastream is considered a community licensee, not owned by a government.
I'm saying the FCC rules have changed in 50 years. How and why they did things 50 years ago has no real application today.
I'm aware of the fundraiser for the antenna. It was paid for by donors, but OWNED by the university and is on university property. The equipment is still there in a building OWNED by the university. The records are all still there on university property. None of it was included in the deal with Ideastream.
But as I said, the students would have received nothing. No internships, no reimbursement for the antenna, nothing for the studio or anything. That money would have gone to the university, and the station would likely become a satellite operation with no local studio or employees. This way, the university gets internships at a local station. If you do a dollar for dollar analysis of exactly how much money Ideastream will be spending on the station, it's a lot more than "nothing." The insurance cost alone that the university is saving is a lot of money.
The last student fundraiser brought in $27,400. If the students were responsible for ALL of the costs of running a radio station, do you think they could have raised the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs in rent, utilities, insurance, and other services?
You obviously see very little benefit in paid internships. I can tell you that most college students in media today get hired directly as a result of their internships. I can give you dozens of examples of people who were hired by some of the biggest broadcasting companies in this country. College radio experience isn't viewed as practical experience because no professional operation allows its employees to play their own music. That was the first lesson I had to learn when I graduated from college. Nobody would hire me based on just college experience, That may have worked for Kid Leo in the 70s, but not now. The way colleges are judged, especially state colleges that receive taxpayer funding, is how many graduates they put into the workforce. THAT'S what this is about. It's about giving students who have an interest in radio practical job-related experience that will get them a job. From what I heard, the students at WCSB were more interested in music than radio. The student GM said she wasn't majoring in communications or media, so that's not an interest of hers. All of this interest in community service is laudable, but it can all be accomplished in other ways. For those who are really interested in radio, the BEST thing they can do is get real life experience at Ideastream or some other professional station.
Last edited: