WVIZ (channel 25) is a PBS member television station in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is owned by Ideastream Public Media alongside classical music station WCLV () and co-managed with Kent State University–owned WKSU (), the NPR member for both Cleveland and Akron. The three stations share studio facilities at the Idea Center on Playhouse Square in Downtown Cleveland; WVIZ's transmitter is located in suburban Parma, Ohio.
WVIZ began broadcasting on February 7, 1965, as Cleveland's first educational television station and the 100th such station in the United States. Its activation culminated years of work by business, philanthropic, and educational leaders to bring non-commercial television to Cleveland. For most of its first three decades of service, under general manager Betty Cope, the station intensively focused on producing and broadcasting educational television programming for schools. WVIZ's commitment to instructional fare sometimes came to the exclusion of the types of national and public affairs series other public television stations in major markets began producing as the medium evolved. This began to change after Cope's 1993 retirement, with the introduction of a daytime schedule of children's programs as well as a weekly arts magazine and documentaries focused on area history.
In 2000, WVIZ merged with WCPN, then Cleveland's NPR news, talk and jazz station; the combined venture, known as Ideastream, then moved to new studios in Playhouse Square in 2006. The station produces local news and arts programming to complement programs from PBS and other national public television distributors; Ideastream also manages The Ohio Channel, a statewide service.
History
From educational radio to educational television
Cleveland had been regarded as a forerunner in educational broadcasting well before WVIZ's sign-on. The Cleveland Board of Education built and signed on WBOE, an AM "Apex" station, on November 21, 1938, as the first radio station fully licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for non-commercial educational use. Converted to the FM band in 1941, WBOE operated strictly as an in-school educational tool for the next three decades. The New Republic described WBOE in 1949 as "a model for the country" and "the most exciting broadcasting job being done". Variety suggested in 1944 that WBOE could be a forerunner to educational television and was already "a close facsimile to actual television". Because of the FM band's obscurity, WBOE was almost entirely invisible outside of the classroom: radio supervisor William B. Levenson expressed hope of "a steady, if not rapid growth" in FM educational stations in 1941, but by 1958, WBOE was the only full-market FM signal receivable in neighboring Akron.
In 1952, when the FCC reallocated television channels after lifting its years-long freeze on new TV station grants, channel 25 in the new ultra high frequency (UHF) was assigned to Cleveland as its reserved channel for educational broadcasting. Some interest existed at that time in allocating the channel, but no such station immediately materialized. By 1960, when leaders of various local school systems met to discuss the establishment of an educational station, Cleveland was among the nation's largest cities without one. Some steps were made in 1961 toward getting an educational station on the air, notably when the Cleveland Board of Education voted to refer a property tax to voters. At that time, members of the Cleveland Board of Education disparaged plans by a community association—the Greater Cleveland Television Education Association, formed in 1958—as not knowledgeable of the needs of the school system.
By June 1962, several interested groups had merged into the Educational Television Association of Metropolitan Cleveland (ETAMC), which absorbed the former association and also featured Levenson, now the superintendent of Cleveland schools, as a key member. The Cleveland Foundation provided a $250,000 grant to the association in November 1963, which significantly accelerated the process and made it possible for the new station to qualify for matching grants and apply for a construction permit from the FCC. Cleveland Broadcasting, owners of local radio station WERE (1300 AM), offered ETAMC usage of their tower site in North Royalton through a lease of $1 a month.