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On October 2, 1950, a small radio antenna perched high above Kent Hall beamed to the outside world the “Community Voice of Kent State University.” Today the voice of WKSU-FM can be heard in an area of approximately 15 square miles. Striving to inform and entertain its listeners, this station thrives on a well-balanced diet of programs ranging from music to religion. The estimated cost of operating the station is in the neighborhood of $3,000. Source: 1951 Chestnut Burr yearbook.
A 1998 yearbook might boast about WKSU’s 30-person professional staff, its 170,000 weekly listeners, its $2.5 million budget, or its three repeater stations that provide coverage to one-third of the state’s population. WKSU has been named “Ohio’s most-listened-to public radio station” for the past 14 years and, thanks to its incredible advances in Internet audio technology, the station is attracting listeners around the globe.
Lovers of classical music in Ohio are no strangers to the beginning of the FM dial. WKSU-FM 89.7, Kent’s National Public Radio station, is one of the shining jewels of the University and surrounding communities with its award-winning coverage of in-depth news and classical music offerings.
The rise to success, although far from easy, was built on the persistence and passion of countless students and employees. The notion of a University-based educational radio station was conceived in the mid 1940s. The post-war years brought tremendous success to Kent’s School of Journalism, and the popularity of radio and broadcasting courses led University President George Bowman to establish a formal program of radio within the School of Speech. Directed by the legendary E. Turner Stump, the School’s first charge was to hire a full-time faculty member who could develop an academic program in radio.
For two years, Stump wooed a man named Walton D. Clarke, a popular radio announcer and newscaster from Springfield, Illinois. Clarke conceded to Stump’s continued pleas and, with a promised salary of $2,600, arrived at Kent in 1946. Clarke was to remain at the University for more than 30 years, where he is fondly recognized as the University’s “Founding Father of Broadcasting.”
 Walton Clarke
WKSU’s First
General Manager | |
Radio work in 1946 was nothing new to Kent students, who had been writing and broadcasting their media workshop productions over Akron’s WAKR radio for several years. In 1948, however, the Federal Communications Commission made low power FM frequencies available to educational institutions. Clarke jumped at the chance for a campus-based station. “It didn’t cost a lot to put these stations on the air, so I was definitely interested,” said Clarke, today enjoying retirement in Southern California. “Miami and Ohio universities both had stations on the air, and we wanted to get ahead of Bowling Green. Our strongest argument was that the station would actually be a part of and support our growing academic program.”
President Bowman agreed to pursue a ten-watt educational station and allowed Clarke and Stump to go to Washington, D.C., to personally submit the application. WKSU was born, and programming debuted on 88.1 FM from Kent Hall at noon on October 2, 1950. “We coined the phrase, ‘The Community Voice of Kent State University,’” said Clarke, “even though we weren’t reaching much farther than the city limits.”
|  John Weiser
WKSU’s First
Director of
Operations |
By this time, professor John Weiser had joined Kent’s growing radio division and was appointed WKSU’s director of operations. Students supplied their own records in the beginning, but it wasn’t long before the station bought a complete Land-Worth Transcription Library of 6,000 selections. University Librarian John Nicholson, who had long enjoyed playing classical music at the library, also lent records to the station from which audio tapes were made.
“One way we had of telling if anyone was listening was the feedback we got when our student announcers mutilated the pronunciation of the compositions and composers,” Clarke said. “But they were learning what it meant to get behind a microphone and actually speak to an audience, as small as it was.”
But WKSU was also battling the newness of its own technology. A city-wide listeners’ survey revealed that less than one percent of the population owned FM radios. Many would-be listeners instead tuned into TV channel 6, whose audio frequency was very close to 88.1. Programming during those first months included Musical Chats, Co-Eds Corner, Broadway Showcase, and Kent Club News. The popular KSU Quizz segment was an ongoing competition between the Greeks and other campus organizations.
In 1954, Weiser and Clarke received word of a planned $3.4 million music and speech center, and they began preparing for a new radio studio within the proposed complex.
“Walt and I did a lot of running around looking at radio stations,” Weiser said. “We knew exactly the kind of things we wanted. We designed a radio studio to have several functions. We wanted to be on the air, we wanted to be able to rehearse, and we wanted to be able to instruct.”
The result of their planning and lobbying was a four-studio, three control-room complex; a 300-foot transmitting tower; and a power boost to 1,000 watts—improvements that caused plenty of heartaches initially. The antenna’s height sparked a concern with the Federal Aviation Administration. A Cleveland FM station complained of interference with WKSU’s new frequency of 89.7. What the station planned as a temporary hiatus extended into 28 frustrating months of silence.
As Kent’s journalism, television, and broadcasting courses adapted and grew over the ensuing years, WKSU emerged with a talk and classical music format. “We did it for two reasons—it was good programming and we were developing the talent of the students who wanted to break into the then-burgeoning industry,” Weiser said. “So we intentionally carried classical music programs. We had an audition that drove our announcers up the wall—a very tough classical music narration. If our students didn’t know the music, they had to at least know how to announce it.”
“We had a great time back then–a lot of fun,” he added. “Some great people came out of WKSU. I remember when Ted Henry came in, around 1965 or ’66. He wanted to be on the air, and he bugged me all the time.”
Weiser finally offered Henry a Saturday pre-game shift from 8am to noon. “He came in, and by golly, he was actually there at 8 o’clock in the morning. He’d do his shift and then he’d go back home to Hartville where he worked in his dad’s hardware shop.” Henry, who had overcome a fear of public speaking at Kent, today remains Cleveland’s most experienced television newscaster.
The most significant turning point for WKSU followed the U.S. Congressional decision in 1967 to form the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the subsequent funding agent for National Public Radio (NPR). John Perry arrived on the scene in 1971 and, as the station’s emerging manager in 1973, was successful in obtaining both CPB and NPR status for WKSU.
 John Perry
WKSU’s Second
General Manager | | |
The station continued its classical music and talk programming, and added NPR’s in-depth afternoon news magazine, All Things Considered. Still, the numbers were low, and Perry now had fundraising to address. “We had an audience of 1,200 people per week, which wasn’t that great,” Perry said. “Then in April of 1974 a tornado struck in Xenia, Ohio, which almost destroyed the town. Someone suggested that we combine our fund drive for WKSU with an appeal for disaster relief. We scraped up about $5,000, half of which we donated to Xenia.”
WKSU slowly increased its audience over the years, adding jazz music and NPR’s evolving programming. “WKSU was the first station in the nation to actually air Morning Edition,” said Perry. “We aired the pilot because the then-vice president of news from NPR, an Akron native, gave us permission. The pilot was so bad that people actually drove to pay phones to call us and complain. We conveyed the information to NPR, and they terminated the hosts and replaced them with Bob Edwards, who’s been with them ever since.”
The station’s ratings continued to increase when WKSU switched to satellite technology for NPR reception and hired radio professionals to supplement its student staff. Perry also credits then-Kent president Brage Golding, who was wise to the power and promise of public radio.
Understanding Perry’s challenges, Golding moved WKSU from the University’s academic sector into the public service area of institutional advancement. “All of a sudden audience numbers, fundraising, everything increased because we had started thinking and operating like a radio station,” Perry said. “We thought more in terms of audience development, raising critically needed funds, reinvesting money for growth, and marketing. And I don’t think we’ve really looked back since.”
The 1980s were good to WKSU, which experienced growing prominence in the Northeast Ohio region. The station captured several awards and expanded its partnership with the University’s nationally renowned annual folk festival. Programming expanded with Weekend Edition and A Prairie Home Companion, and the station was honored by the Ohio governor for its contributions to the arts. In 1986, WKSU was the only station in the United States invited to participate in the Statue of Liberty centennial celebration, and the station originated live nationwide broadcasts of the National Folk Festival in New York City.
 WKSU’s 40th anniversary in 1990 launched a decade of community involvement and growing national recognition. Landing a lion’s share of the station’s awards has been WKSU’s in-house news staff—the writers and reporters of in-depth items of local, regional, and national interest. “Higher education is always covered, as is the environment, urban sprawl, economic issues, and statewide and regional politics,” Perry said. “Our news staff does the kind and quality of news locally that NPR does nationally—no commercial station comes close to attempting it.”
In 1991, the station broke ground for its current broadcast center at the corner of Loop and Summit roads, and a $2.175 million capital campaign helped open its doors a year later. Awards continued to flow in from the CPB, the Associated Press, the Public Radio Program Directors Association, and Women in Communications. In addition to its dozens of programming honors, WKSU was also named “Best Sounding Public Radio Station in the Nation” and was recognized for “Best Sounding On-Air Development in the Nation.”
The plethora of honors, however, had one drawback. Other, bigger radio stations were drawn to WKSU’s award-winning staff. “WKSU had a reputation of having this reservoir of incredibly talented, creative people who were, by national standards, underpaid,” Perry said. “The stations in New York and Los Angeles came in and cherry picked people away from us. We started hurting, and about three years ago our ratings began to fall.”
“It took about two years for us to crawl back,” he added, “but we’ve recovered very nicely with the talent we attracted and developed. I think we sound better today than we ever have. Some people may disagree, of course, but we try and appeal to an audience that’s educated, intelligent, and worldly, but that still wants to have fun.”
Kent students, who continue to remain a significant component of WKSU’s operation, were paid more than $91,000 in student wages by the station last year alone—more than 200 percent of the station’s entire 1972 operating budget. Perry hopes to expand those dollars into scholarships.
As the 1990s draw to a close, WKSU can be proud of the wealth of cultural opportunities it’s brought to northeast Ohio. In 1997, WKSU brought Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion to Blossom Music Center for a single performance. Akron audiences revived the dormant Highland Theatre for shows by Roger McGuinn, formerly of the Byrds, and NPR commentator and author David Sedaris. WKSU conducted a remote broadcast during Cleveland’s Great Lakes Science Center premiere and sponsored a breakfast with Morning Edition’s Bob Edwards at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
And just as WKSU pioneered its way in the 1950s with FM radio, it does so now with the Internet. The station offers daily audio broadcasts over the Internet that have captured a worldwide audience. WKSU regularly receives e-mail from Internet listeners in South Africa, Korea, Japan, China, the Netherlands, Sweden, and elsewhere.
“We’re reaching a whole new population over the Internet,” Perry said. Locally, he fully expects WKSU’s radio audience to break through 200,000 in the near future with the relocation of its transmitter to Copely and the addition of a 50,000-watt repeater station east of Cleveland.
But with eyes and ears ever watchful of the industry’s future trends, Perry has little time to ponder the station’s success. “There are industry experts who question whether our news/classical format will continue to work for us in the future,” he said. “Growing numbers of stations realize that they simply can’t serve diversified programming to multiple groups—there’s just too much market consolidation and market fragmentation.”
“Under our multi-format approach, it may be difficult to remain number one in Ohio for many more years.” Perry added. “I would like to prove them (the experts) wrong.”
Increased financial support is an on-going concern for WKSU. The station has approximately 15,000 contributing members, who, combined with corporate support, represent more than 60 percent of the station’s budget.
“Community support is more important than ever,” Perry said. “As the Corporation for Public Broadcasting continues to reduce federal operating subsidies, we’re increasingly turning to members to pick up the slack.”
The station’s future direction has yet to be determined, but Perry predicts one thing: WKSU will always depend upon and preserve its student component. “This station was built on the labor and the love of students who have gone through Kent State University,” he said. “That will never be forgotten—especially by the students who have been engaged by our expectations of excellence.”
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