WCLV 50TH ANNIVERSARY ITEMS
On November 1 of this year, WCLV celebrates its 50th anniversary of providing classical music on the radio in northeast Ohio. Of interest will be the samples of programming schedules from the very early days of the station when the studios were located at Eastgate Shopping Center in a building constructed for the predecessor station WDGO. The building was torn down in the late 20th Century to make way for the Target® store now on the site.
Linked here are programming pages from Thursday, November 1, 1962, the day the FCC transferred the license to C. K. Patrick and Robert Conrad; and from Sunday, November 4, 1962, the first day that the station operated under the call letters WCLV. Also copies of the first issue of the WCLV Guide from September of 1963. The Guide was published through July, 1976, after which the programming was listed in FM Guide, and then in Northern Ohio Live. In 1996, when the age of the Internet dawned, the Guide began being published as part of the WCLV website.
You will undoubtedly notice some differences in programming in those first two years and now. We talked much more back then, including weekly forums from the University of Chicago, which were broadcast twice. We also carried the Gund Lectures from John Carroll Unversity.
There were weekly full-length plays—note Romeo and Juliet with Claire Bloom, Dame Edith Evans and Albert Finney. We even had an hour of poetry on Saturday afternoon. There was a program called The British Information Services Presents. 1:00 PM on weekdays was the slot for a variety of talk shows from the Canadian Radio Playhouse to spoken word recordings. Oh, yes, our newscasts were as long as they needed to be—up to 15 minutes, if necessary.
We broadcast folk music on a show called We Come for to Sing, weekedays at 12:30 to 1:00 PM. And Saturdays at 5:00 PM, Jazz Comes to WCLV was on for an hour. At 8:00 PM on Saturdays, we presented two hours of original cast Broadway musicals, a show that inspired teenager Bill Rudman's passion for musicals. Bill has been the host of Footlight Parade on WCLV for decades. And, of course, at 10:00 PM to Midnight, the legendary WCLV Saturday Night was aired. It lasted until 1989. Its spirit, however, continues with Weekend Radio.
One thing that has been constant is our morning drive show, which has been called First Program since the beginning.
RDC
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