Thursday, March 17, 2022
The City Club of Cleveland Moves to New Forum Time April 1st
Try for a second to imagine the first time a City Club forum was broadcast live on the radio. It was 1928, and radio was still a new invention. WHK, the first radio station in Cleveland, had just started broadcasting six years earlier. The City Club had been convening forums for 16 years at that point. And then, on a Saturday afternoon in 1928, what was happening at the City Club was audible in the living rooms across Greater Cleveland. It would be years before radios became ubiquitous, but any of those listeners, if they had access to a phone, could pose a question to the speaker. For the first time, you didn’t have to be a City Club member or the guest of the member to participate in the conversation. With a phone call and a question, you could change the direction of the dialogue.
Over the decades, we moved the weekly forum from Saturday to Friday and our broadcast partners changed, from WHK to WGAR and eventually in the late 20thcentury, to WCLV and then to WCPN.
Now, in 2022, we are taking the next, rather big step with our live radio broadcasts. As our primary media partner Ideastream Public Media brings 89.7 FM WKSU into its family of stations and platforms, our live radio broadcasts are shifting to a new time, a new spot on the radio dial, and a larger audience. Beginning April 1, the live radio broadcast of our Friday Forums will move to 89.7 FM WKSU and begin 30 minutes earlier, at 12 noon. With this move, the forum will now reach a much larger live audience, from Ashtabula County in the northeast, west to Huron and south to New Philadelphia, in Tuscarawas County.
This move is an evolution of our 94-year commitment to the live broadcast of our weekly forum, and we’re grateful to our partners at Ideastream Public Media for sharing that commitment.
If you’re joining us in-person for our forums in April and going forward, please plan to arrive a little earlier. Doors will open at 11:15 a.m. and the forum will run from 12 noon to 1 p.m. And as it has been for more than the last decade, our livestream is still available to you for free. And the same goes for our podcasts, and our archives, for as far back as we have them.
If you have any questions, be sure to check out our FAQ and please don’t hesitate to contact us at 216.621.0082.
We hope to see you at the City Club soon!
