Undoubtedly, it would be the party of the year if all the characters (both fictional and real) who ever appeared on WVIZ over the past 60 years got together to raise a toast. WVIZ, Ideastream Public Media’s television service, was founded Feb. 7, 1965. It was the 100th public television service in the country.
At its founding, WVIZ could claim the first female general manager of a major market television station in the United States. Betty Cope served in that role until 1993 when she retired. (Initially, WVIZ was part of National Educational Television, which became PBS in 1970.)
“Very early on, WVIZ was well known for creating educational programs designed to be used in the classroom. These were not just for K-12, but for the workforce, as well. It was a major push by Betty,” says Mark Rosenberger, Ideastream Public Media’s chief content officer, who joined WVIZ in 1988 and assumed his current role in 2018. “At one time, back in the 1970s, WVIZ was one of the leading producers of educational shows.”
Gradually, “without abandoning the original and traditional focus of public media,” according to Rosenberger, the station began offering and producing additional shows with what viewers saw as “more entertainment value.” But the idea that there is a “bold line between educational television and entertainment” is simply not true, he says.
“We learned that everything we do has some educational value to it. Our pledge, whether for a news show, a cooking show or a children’s show, is to provide people with an opportunity to learn,” says Rosenberger.
Ideastream was formed in 2001 after a merger of PBS member station WVIZ (Channel 25) and then NPR member station WCPN (supplanted by WCLV) in 2000. It was rebranded as Ideastream Public Media in 2021.
“WVIZ had a profound history prior to the founding of Ideastream,” says Rosenberger. “But joining together with radio station WCPN was pretty earth shattering at the time. There were other public television and radio stations that worked together in other markets, but this was unique in that both the Cleveland television station and the public radio station were both very healthy and doing well. They had active boards and very responsible leadership at the top, including Jerry Wareham at WVIZ and Kit Jensen at WCPN.”
Rosenberger admits there were some merger challenges — mainly “different cultures with different ways of telling stories.” But it was “always the vision to not operate as two separate organizations with two separate offices.”
Today, WVIZ produces programs for local, regional and national distribution and continues to be a leader in community broadcasting. Rosenberger also says there is a common thread to what topics are chosen for production.
“We are not going to produce a show that anybody anywhere can do. We want to amplify why Northeast Ohio is such a great place to live,” Rosenberger says, pointing out programing including the Anisfeld-Wolf Book Awards, Sound of Ideas (on TV and radio), the City Club of Cleveland, Applause and NewsDepth for students (on air for more than 50 years).
Rosenberger is most proud of WVIZ’s contributions to the Violins of Hope: Strings of the Holocaust project in 2015. This moving PBS documentary looks at restored violins that were played before and during the Holocaust. WVIZ produced related shows with the Cleveland Orchestra performing with some of the violins at the Milton and Tamar Maltz Performing Arts Center.
Now and in the future, podcasts and digital media access to WVIZ for all, and across all platforms, will expand and improve, Rosenberger says. Early this year, for example, Living for We, a locally produced, season-two podcast exploring the physical and mental health impacts of racism as a public health crisis, debuted.
“One of the things WVIZ is doing more than ever before in its 60 years is engaging with the community,” says Rosenberger. “We are listening and learning and want to stay relevant.”
