page_title: WKSU
section_title: Joining NPR and further expansion
hierarchical_section_title: WKSU / History / Joining NPR and further expansion
caption_attribution_description: English: Amanda Rabinowitz in the WKSU-FM Newsroom
context_page_description: WKSU – branded 89.7 WKSU – is a non-commercial educational radio station licensed to serve Kent, Ohio, and primarily serving the Akron metropolitan area. WKSU also reaches much of Greater Cleveland, and extends throughout Northeast Ohio with two low-power broadcast relay stations and four full-power repeaters. Owned by Kent State University, WKSU broadcasts a mix of public radio and classical music, and serves as the local affiliate for NPR, American Public Media, and Public Radio International. Besides a standard analog transmission, WKSU broadcasts over four HD Radio channels, and is available online. The WKSU studios are located on the campus of Kent State University, while the station transmitter is in Copley.
context_section_description: By 1973, according to former general manager John Perry, WKSU-FM had only 7,500 watts of power, and was not yet broadcasting in stereo. The station was only on the air for 85 hours a week, and programming was created by students, and scheduled around their class and vacation times. The entire operating budget was $42,000, reaching an audience of about 1,200 listeners. The station had a full-time staff of three.
  WKSU-FM received for the first time money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1973, and also established an affiliation with National Public Radio (NPR) that same year, although it had carried the NPR program All Things Considered as early as March 1972. By February 1974, WKSU-FM debuted a local morning program titled Morning Show, created by Cleveland broadcasting veteran Dr. Bill Randle, then a professor of communications at Kent State. The program also featured Paul Warfield delivering sports reports, as Warfield was continuing his graduate studies at the university. WKSU-FM hosted their first fundraising drive over the weekend of April 19–21, 1974, offering in advance to give half of the money raised to relief efforts in Xenia, Ohio following the 1974 Super Outbreak. WKSU-FM met their goal of $10,000, with the relief efforts receiving $5,000. The NPR affiliation would prove useful as WKSU-FM carried the network's coverage of the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment process against President Richard Nixon gavel-to-gavel throughout the spring and early summer of 1974, one of the few stations in the region to have done so.
  Following the closure of part-time Cleveland NPR member WBOE (90.3 FM) by the Cleveland Board of Education on October 7, 1978, WKSU-FM effectively began doubling as the de facto NPR member in Greater Cleveland and Northeast Ohio, with Cleveland earning the dubious distinction of being the largest metropolitan city in the United States without a dedicated NPR-aligned outlet. In July 1980, the station expanded its signal to reach over a million potential listeners in Northeast Ohio thanks to a grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration increasing its power to 12,000 watts. An additional power upgrade for WKSU-FM was filed with the FCC in early 1982 and contested by the Cleveland Public Library system, which had attempted to acquire WBOE's license and was competing with Cleveland Public Radio, who sought out a replacement license for 90.3 MHz. Incidentally, the director for the Cleveland Public Library was not opposed to WKSU-FM's power increase request. A settlement between the Cleveland Public Library, Cleveland Public Radio and the Cleveland Board of Education by September 1982 cleared the way for WBOE's replacement, WCPN, to begin broadcasting on September 8, 1984, ending WKSU-FM's status as the unofficial NPR member of record for the entire region; WKSU-FM and WCPN management expressed optimism that both stations could remain viable and help increase awareness of public radio. Although WKSU-FM operates at relatively modest power for a full NPR member, its 908-foot tower allows it to provide at least grade B coverage to most of Greater Cleveland to the north, with Cleveland itself getting a city-grade signal. It currently operates a newsroom in Cleveland.
  WKSU-FM linked up with the Westar 1 satellite on January 22, 1980; this proved useful in the station convincing NPR management to transmit The Texaco Metropolitan Opera Saturday Matinee over the satellite instead of through dedicated phone lines, that change took effect for the March 15, 1980 Metropolitan Opera Saturday Matinee broadcast. The satellite linkup not only greatly improved the fidelity of NPR programs over WKSU-FM, but also allowed the station to begin broadcasting and recording live music programs, including the Boston Globe Jazz Festival and the Salzburg Festival. In addition, a 1979 WKSU-FM production of A Christmas Carol presented by the Kent Acting and Touring Company—itself rebroadcast annually by the station—found national distribution on December 25, 1983 by American Public Rad
caption: A reporter works in the WKSU Newsroom
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