Robert Conrad of WCLV

WCLV’s Robert Conrad remembers asking his mother what he needed to do to become a radio announcer. Taking him seriously, she replied, “Learn how to pronounce all of the words in the dictionary.”

He was five years old at the time. But the boy was serious. He made toy microphones out of toilet paper rolls. And quietly started reading the dictionary into them.

This was in Kankakee, Illinois, in 1938, when radio was in its absolute hey-day. By the time Robert was 14, he had worked his way into being a “go-fer” at the local radio station, WKAN. He did this by standing around waiting for someone to tell him to “carry this”. It worked, and soon enough, he was hauling remote gear for the basketball games and keeping score for the sportscasters. In high school, he hosted a live Saturday afternoon teen-age program, and the summer he graduated from high school, he became the station’s summer vacation announcer. He did everything—record shows, man-on-the-street interviews, telephone quiz programs, read the news and the hog reports. Good thing it was before the days of “format” radio! The station played classical music as well as country and western. And one of the shows Bob was assigned to was “Hayloft Jamboree”, a live country and western show staring Harley Dowell and the Sun Valley Boys with Sunbeam Marcia Jean Gockel. It aired live on Saturdays at 2:00 PM. And as the host, Bob became Sagebrush Bob. He vividly remembers one listener protest, “I like the music you play, but you use too big a words.”

By the time he was ready for Northwestern University in suburban Chicago, he’d accumulated four years of broadcasting experience. While attending NU’s Speech School, he worked at the local FM station, WEAW, where he eventually became program director. However, as a freshman, he worked evenings when WEAW played classical music. And thus he was thrown into the classical music swimming pool. So, he would take the playlist back to the dorm where his three music school roomies helped him puzzle out the pronunciations.

He was still just a junior at Northwestern when yet another door opened to him. This was at WFMT, a pioneer classical music FM station in Chicago. Bob auditioned for the job as replacement for Mike Nichols (yes—that Mike Nichols) and got it.

When time for the Army came along, Bob was sent to Hawaii, where he was part of the 14th Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Battalion. (I’m not making this up!) He recalls it as a fun time—defending liberty while at the beach at Waikaki. And, again, in the evenings, he worked for a couple of Honolulu radio stations. Then came another terrific boost: NBC Radio’s “Monitor” program initiated a contest for “The Most Beautiful Voice in America.”

At the urging of his Army colleagues, Bob entered and won the Hawaii portion of the contest, beating out the lead newscaster from the local NBC radio station. For that he received a trip to Las Vegas. His entry made it all the way to the national level, where he was second out of twelve finalists. Since the first prize went to a woman, his was considered the most beautiful male voice in the country.

After discharge from the Army, he returned to WFMT, except for time out to take the trip to Europe that he won in the “Voice” contest and to sell another prize—a grand piano that he sold in order to purchase a Volkswagen. In 1960, Bob and his new wife Jean moved to Detroit where he was program director for a new classical music station WDTM. But it wasn’t very long before C.K.”Pat” Patrick called one day from Cleveland. Pat wanted to buy a radio station in Cleveland, but he needed someone to do the programming. Several Detroit-area advertising friends of Pat’s had recommended Bob for the task. And the rest—as they say—is history. The two men borrowed every penny they could scrape together to come up with enough money for a down payment on station WDGO, then located in the Eastgate Shopping Center. And on November 1, 1962, the FCC granted the license for the newly christened WCLV.

Originally they wanted WCLE to match the airline designation for Cleveland. But that identity belonged to a station in Cleveland, Tennessee. Next they asked for WCLD, but those call letters are in Cleveland, Mississippi. So they ended up with WCLV. It proved to be a winner.

For awhile, until sales began to pickup a bit, Bob was among the busiest radio guys in Cleveland. In addition to his duties at WCLV, he worked part-time for WERE, which during the 60s had the radio rights to both the Indians and the Browns games. There were times when both teams would be playing simultaneously, so WERE would purchase time on WGAR (AM) to air the Browns, recording the game for playback on WERE later in the day. Bob was the only staff announcer on duty at WERE, running back and forth from one studio to another, trying to keep straight if it was the 7th inning stretch on the Indian’s broadcast on WERE, or half time on the Brown’s game over on WGAR. At the same time, he’d be announcing classical music programs on WCLV – thanks to the magic of tape.

Before long, three significant events provided a boon to the young station. The Catholic Diocese decided to broadcast in-school programming on WCLV’s subchannel, with a special radio in each classroom. The Bishop was kind enough to pay for the first year—in advance.

Next, in 1964, Cleveland Trust began Symphony at Seven which has remained on the air since then, even though the succeeding several banks have all gone by the wayside, until the most recent, KeyBank, took over. In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the program, they expanded the hour of classical music to seven days a week from the original five. This is now the longest-running commercial radio program in Cleveland.

Then, in 1965, the Cleveland Orchestra made the decision to start syndication of their concerts, making the programs available to stations around the country. WCLV was given the task of producing and distributing the concerts. Again, WCLV asked for and received the first year’s payment in advance.

About this time, the radio networks were facing increased competition from television, and gave up their broadcasts of the nation’s orchestras. The Boston Symphony was the first to realize the benefits of producing their own tapes and leasing them to stations, putting the profits into the orchestra members’ pension fund. In September of 1965, The Cleveland Orchestra and WCLV organized the Cleveland Orchestra Radio Network with weekly broadcasts going out to a hundred or so stations and the profits benefiting the pension plan. But in 1983, a new contract with the orchestra members required that the musicians be paid directly, rather than the funds going into the pension fund. The Orchestra had to scramble to find sponsorship.

The white knight was Sohio (later BP) that became the sponsor of the broadcasts. For something close a million dollars a year, they provided 52 weeks of concert broadcasts a year to some 300+ stations.

And then, in 1992, the unthinkable happened. The price of oil dropped to $15 a barrel! Oil companies scrambled to recoup their losses, and one of the first things that BP did was to cancel their sponsorship of The Cleveland Orchestra radio broadcasts.

A consortium of local companies was assembled to provide for 26 weeks of national broadcasts—13 new and 13 archival concerts, while, locally, the entire schedule was broadcast over WCLV. Then the Internet happened, and “streaming” became popular, presuming, of course, the musicians’ contract approved of such a thing. For awhile, some national broadcasts, including Cleveland’s, were stilled. But happily for all of us, the current Orchestra contract not only allows for streaming of the broadcasts, but also allows for live broadcasts of most of the Saturday night concerts.

A major development in the life of WCLV came in the mid 90s, when Congress re-wrote the Telecommunications Law to allow a given broadcasting company to own as many radio stations nationally as it could afford. This resulted in a mass grab for radio stations everywhere. Many of the commercial classical music stations suddenly discovered they were worth much more dead than alive and were put on the block for sky-high prices in the millions of dollars. They fell like flies, and in Cleveland, the men running WCLV began to notice and to worry.

In Seattle, classical station KING-FM had been owned by two elderly sisters who formed a foundation to own and run the station, with the profits going to the local orchestra, opera and arts consortium.

Conrad and his current partner, Rich Marschner, (Patrick retired in 1992), were concerned about what would happen to WCLV when they were off the scene. So while the two were pondering the next move, another situation arose. A number of large media companies started making offers of many millions of dollars for the station, while freely admitting that they would change the format. The management realized that it was the frequency (then 95.5—smack dab in the middle of the dial) that was so valuable, not the format. If WCLV could find another frequency and keep the format, why not? They started looking around.

The result was that on July 3, 2001, a massive shift in station ownership plus frequency and/or format switches happened, affecting seven stations in all. WCLV ended up with its current 104.9, then housed in Lorain, but with the proviso that the tower could be moved 12 miles closer to downtown Cleveland and the power doubled. WCLV also acquired an AM station, WHK 1420. They changed the call letters to WCLV (AM), originally intending to simply simulcast the classical programming. However, just before the deal was to be finalized in July of 2001, they made yet another change, taking over the “music of your life” format that was abandoned by WRMR as part of the frequency and format shifts.

Before long, the WRMR call letters were put back into place, but the format began to appear “not long for the world”. And so in July of 2004, the management accepted an offer they couldn’t refuse and sold the station. “It was one of the few important business decisions I made as a business decision, not as an emotional one,“ says Conrad, “It still hurts. We all enjoyed and had fun with WRMR.”

The benefits to Cleveland area arts organizations and area classical music listeners have been enormous. The WCLV Foundation came into existence during this massive switcheroo and guaranteed the existence of classical music on the radio in northeast Ohio into perpetuity. WCLV remains a for-profit venture, with profits going to the non-profit WCLV Foundation. Each year disbursements are made to five major area arts organizations: The Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Play House, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Institute of Music and the Cleveland Foundation.

Here in Cleveland, WCLV is still humming busily along, doing more live music events than ever before, and probably more than any other radio station in the country. Bob likes to quote George Szell on the topic: “The magic of ‘live’ is in that moment when something can go wrong and doesn’t.” The bottom line, of course, is service to the community. WCLV has been especially successful with blood drives for the Red Cross, now holding the biggest one-day blood drives in Ohio. And, over the years, WCLV has raised millions of dollars for various arts organizations.

Bob has cut back some in the last years. He and his wife have a condo in Florida, and he spends a couple of weeks at a time there during the winter months, still able to keep in contact by listening to WCLV on the Internet. In the meantime, he and Marschner have assembled a staff to keep the place, fondly known as “radio ranch” marching steadily into the future. Bill O’Connell, Vice President of Programming, is in charge of the day-to-day on-the-air nuts and bolts. Station manager and VP is Jenny Northern, who doubles as General Sales Manager. Annie Bartlett is the Business Manager VP, and Wiley Cornell is Vice President for Development. A goodly number of the voices you hear on WCLV every day have been there for years, including Mark Satola and John Simna. Jacqueline Gerber and O’Connell came here in 2001.

Syndication is still going strong, the website grows daily, a new something about iPODS is in the works, and the City Club Forum continues its weekly presence on a local and national basis.

For himself, Bob has no plans to retire. “They’ll have to carry me feet first out of the announcer's booth at Severance Hall. I figure I may have another 10 years left to enjoy this.” And make no mistake, he does enjoy it. It’s the only career he ever wanted. Not many of us can make that claim.

Interview and photos by Kelly Ferjutz (:divend:)