WCSB College Radio's Shutdown Is a Profound Loss for Cleveland’s Creative Communities

Alison Bomgardner speaks into a microphone with ease onstage at the Beachland Ballroom, seated next to Liam Main. Both of them are fellow former student programmers on WCSB, now known as XCSB — Bomgardner was the general manager and Main the business director. On Monday night, in their latest public appearance, the two Cleveland State University students are accompanied by fellow programmers and station managers (WRUW’s Rachel Hunt and WJCU’s Jasen Sokol) in a conversation about the impact of Cleveland’s college radio scene, hosted by the local nonprofit Cleveland Rocks: Past, Present and Future.

“The left end of the dial is for commercial stations and college students to eff up on air — but it's also where you get the most genuine connection with your community,” Bomgardner says. “Even if we look at WMMS or an IHeart[Media radio station], most of the time, it's either syndicated; some of them even use AI now. That's something you wouldn't find on the left end.”

An audience of just under 100 people, many of them fellow college radio station DJs — myself included — fills the indie venue, anxious to hear what comes next for XCSB after the former college radio station went off the air and was replaced by a 24/7 JazzNEO channel that’s run by Ideastream Public Media earlier this month. To understand what it all means for Cleveland’s college radio community.

It’s personal. A big chunk of my non-college life has had something to do with college radio. For most Friday mornings of the past 10 years, I’ve trekked to WRUW, Case Western Reserve University’s basement station, to host a freeform music show on another number on the left end of the dial: FM 91.1. Back in 2016, I started out as a fourth-year CWRU student and, as many alums do, stuck around as a community member DJ.

Now, almost every Friday morning, I get up before the sun rises and head into the wood-paneled Studio B to queue up a mish-mash of tunes for my indie-rock show "Sunny Day." I manage the sound boards and share stories about music and gardening and pets and life — all while taking occasional calls and online messages from listeners.

Those calls and messages have shown me how college radio can forge community in the most unlikely spaces. I’ve spoken to office workers and researchers tuning in on the job — parents driving their kids to school — mechanics working in car shops. A blind sculptor shaping projects in the super-early morning hours and waiting for his ride to church. A veteran who said that listening to college radio hosts at night helped him manage post-traumatic stress disorder. A regular listener from Germany who tunes in from a vastly different time zone, sending in offbeat song requests.

It’s one powerful, personal, diverse, far-flung community.

XCSB had that, too.

Programming at CSU’s college radio station spanned cultures and generations in its 98 weekly shows, which included jazz programs and so much more. There was Herb Irvin’s soul, funk and R&B show, “Anti-Urban Contemporary Thang,” and Lisa Miralia’s experimental noise show, “Mysterious Black Box.” Bomgardner hosted her freeform show “Squirm” under the DJ name “Squirrel,” while Liam Main helped organize “CSB Live,” a live program showcasing local bands. 

There was the classic rock-infused “The Grumpy Old Man Show”; Scary Ellen’s ’70s and ’80s punk program “Millions of Dead Chickenheads.” The “Monster Boogie” ska show. “The Day Man Lost” metal show. “Timmy the Hippie’s Folk Show.” A talk program called “669.” Darrick Grant’s acclaimed “Eclectic Soul” program. Longtime established programming for Slovenian, German, Arabic, Hungarian and Polish communities — a few of which were selected to potentially have new slots on Ideastream, says Ideastream President & CEO Kevin Martin.

But on Oct. 3 — notably, World College Radio Day — all of the CSU radio station’s weird-and-wonderful blend of student and community programming went off the air following an agreement between the university and Ideastream. Discussions and negotiations occurred with a non-disclosure agreement in place. It switched around 11 a.m., making FM 89.3 the home to JazzNEO, which features a few local hosts along with remote programs syndicated out of Chicago. The announcement happened suddenly, without warning and without student programmer discussion or input, says Bomgardner. News 5 was on the scene as CSU police abruptly escorted students out of the building that day.

The moment cut off a nearly 50-year run of independent, eclectic and experimental music and talk programming on the left end of Cleveland’s airwaves. With a metaphorical snap of fingers that you might hear in a jazz club, WCSB became one thing it had fought to not be for decades: homogeneous.

Read More at Cleveland Scene: Inside the Backlash Against CSU and Ideastream After Unceremonious Killing of WCSB

A copy of the operating agreement between Ideastream and Cleveland State University, obtained by Cleveland Magazine, shows that while no money was directly exchanged between the organizations in the switch, the public media company took control of the operations of the valuable WCSB FM 89.3 frequency while the university retained its Federal Communications Commission license. Under the agreement, CSU is set to receive internship and learning opportunities (details of which are not outlined in the agreement), 1,000 on-air underwriting announcements and a seat on Ideastream’s Board of Trustees.

Just a week and a half before it all went down, Ideastream announced a $1 million Char and Chuck Fowler donation to the company, to specifically support a dedicated JazzNEO studio.

The switch fueled ire in Cleveland’s college radio community, which instantly flowed in social media comments sections and fervent email chains among DJs. In it, a profound sense of loss and grief.

XCSB and its supporters took a stand. A few days later, on Oct. 7, about 200 people gathered on a drizzly day for an hour-long silent protest on CSU’s campus. A week after that, on Oct. 14, Bomgardner joined CSU president Laura Bloomberg, Ideastream President and CEO Kevin Martin and former WCSB general manager and current Signal Ohio Documenters Program Director Lawrence Daniel Caswell for a heated conversation on Ideastream’s The Sound of Ideas program. (Ideastream’s newsroom is editorially independent from Ideastream Public Media’s leadership.) A few days after that, on Oct. 17, protesters gathered outside of The City Club for another demonstration, holding posters and chanting outside of the building’s glass doors on Euclid Avenue during a conversation titled “The Future of Public Media.” 

A petition to retract Ideastream’s operations of WCSB and return the station to the students gathered more than 2,900 signatures. Cleveland city councilman Kris Harsh, himself a former WRUW DJ, railed against the decision at an Oct. 6 City Council meeting, saying he canceled his donations to Ideastream due to the new agreement. 

“What makes Cleveland a beautiful place is the amount of people we can support in our community. Not just the mainstream, not just the normal folks, but those weird misfits that need their own island, those people that don’t belong anywhere else, those people like me who tune in in the middle of the night and discover grindcore,” Harsh said in an impassioned speech. “We need a place to go. We need a home. And college radio gives us our home. It gives us a place to say ‘I belong.’”

Look, I don’t know much about grindcore, but I do know the sentiment — the fulfillment I’ve experienced, sharing and discovering new music in one of the most musically passionate scenes in the city.

Cleveland college radio is home. 

That home, for XCSB, is changing, but it’s not demolished. At the Beachland Ballroom on Oct. 20, Bomgardner and Main say they are exploring several paths for the next stage of the organization, and are involved in ongoing conversations with CSU and Ideastream. They hope for a return to terrestrial radio, though they’ve explored the potential of online streaming formats, as well. Regardless, XCSB has a future — a murky one, but a future — heading into its 50th year in 2026.

“The community will continue to grow, regardless of Ideastream or Cleveland State or any institution’s decisions to try to stifle community from really continuing,” Bomgardner says at the Beachland event. “Flowers still bloom through the cracks on concrete, and you can pave a road, but you can't get rid of all the beautiful things that come from under it.”

Monday’s Beachland conversation dips into independent radio’s support of local musicians and concert venues. Hunt and Sokol talk about how their station work led directly to their current careers. They talk about XCSB’s extensive vinyl collection and its future. They recognize CSU’s financial struggles and challenges as a public university in the current political climate. They highlight XCSB’s Halloween Ball, set for Oct. 25, back here at the Beachland Ballroom. The concert, still on the calendar, is free and open to the public.

They talk about the importance of free speech and creativity and finding a voice on the airwaves. And they push back against a few crowd members, former WMMS DJs Denny Sanders and John Gorman, who, in the audience Q&A portion of the evening, suggest that XCSB would not be able to get their FM signal back. They’re not quite ready to give up on that fight.

The four panelists, from three different signals, come together to talk about the troubling trend of college radio stations dwindling away in recent years, as many colleges and universities have sold their FM licenses or transferred control of frequencies to outside organizations. Since 2019, just in Ohio, Wittenberg University, Denison University and Ohio Northern University have relinquished control of or sold their licenses to external organizations.

As that control now leaves XCSB, many in the community push for a reverse-course.

On Monday, at the same time that XCSB station members discuss the importance of college radio from the stage of the Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland City Council brings some of the same topics to council chambers. Ward 9’s Kevin Conwell denounces Ideastream’s push to jazz programming; Ward 3’s Lauren Welch discusses her important experiences as an emo music college radio DJ and as a musician, encouraging CSU students to, in the words of All-American Rejects, “Give them hell.”

The issue drew hundreds of public comments on the council's website; “more comments on this issue than any issue in the history of public comments in Cleveland,” Harsh says. On this night, City Council unanimously passes an emergency resolution to urge CSU to restore WCSB to its students and former station members.

At the Beachland Ballroom, attendees share the resolution update live, in a room full of DJs and listeners cheering and clapping together, in community. A victory.

But this resolution is not likely to get XCSB back to what it once was. The following day, after her state of the university speech, Bloomberg tells WKYC that despite the resolution, the deal isn't budging. "While I believe we need to honor the legacy of this radio station, I firmly believe we also need to pivot to the future and look at the technologies that students can access today that allow more college-age students to access the media," Bloomberg said to WKYC. "A lot of college students do not have FM radios; they are accessing information on their phones through streaming."

The future of XCSB is less clear than ever. But the protests and events continue. The Happy Dog owner Sean Watterson announced a weekly Friday night XCSB DJ event series for the month of November to support former programmers. WRUW started an "XCSB On Air" show from 2 to 3 p.m. on Saturdays, featuring a rotating guest list of former WCSB college radio DJs. Beachland Ballroom owner Cindy Barber mentioned talks of finding space for XCSB to use in the Waterloo Arts District. 

Despite the turmoil of the past few weeks, the nearly 50-year-old piece of the local music scene continues, as always, to forge a community in Cleveland — its impact reverberating and resonating still.

(Editor’s note: This column does not necessarily reflect the views of WRUW. WRUW has released an official statement on WCSB, stating: “As a station who has supported independent student and community programming for over 50 years, we express frustration at the decision of Cleveland State University to switch from freeform student programming to a 24/7 Jazz alternative.” Read the full statement here.)