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WVIZ was the 100th public television station to sign on in America. Its founder was Betty Cope, a former producer at fellow Cleveland, Ohio station WEWS, who recognized the value of non-commercial television for the schools. After a long struggle to clear all the hurdles, WVIZ signed on Sunday, February 7, 1965 just in time for the start of the Cleveland school year's second semester.

The first voice heard on WVIZ was that of Alan R. Stephenson, Ph.D. He was the first director of WVIZ's educational services department. Stephenson's duties included casting, setting budgets, and acting as executive producer for dozens of instructional television productions.

WVIZ's first affiliation was with National Educational Television (NET), which led to PBS in 1970. While other PBS stations established themselves with prime-time series, WVIZ remained committed first and foremost to the schools.

When PBS began feeding programs via satellite in 1979, WVIZ hired its first executive producer, Milton Hoffman. He oversaw a few WVIZ productions before resigning in 1982. The next executive producer was Dennis Goulden, formerly of WKYC. He lasted approximately four years. WVIZ replaced Goulden quickly in mid-1988 with Mark Rosenberger.

On June 1, 1993, after 28 years at the helm, WVIZ president Betty Cope stepped down. Her post went to Jerrold Wareham, the former G.M. at Greater Dayton Public Television (operating WPTD in Dayton and WPTO in Oxford, Ohio). Wareham effectively rid WVIZ of its ITV schedule, filling the daytime hours with PBS Kids series such as Barney & Friends. Wareham also modified the station name to WVIZ/PBS in December 1999. This was to play the name game with their closest PBS affiliates, WNEO/WEAO in Portage County (they adopted the gimmick nickname PBS 45 & 49 in late 1998).

In December 2001, WVIZ/PBS merged with Cleveland NPR station 90.3 WCPN to establish a unified source for public broadcasting and lectures. The new company name is ideastream.

External links

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• PBS member stations