WKLV-FM (95.5 FM) is a non-commercial radio station licensed to Cleveland, Ohio, United States, airing a Christian contemporary format as the Cleveland affiliate for K-Love. Owned by the Educational Media Foundation (EMF) d/b/a K-Love Inc., the station serves Greater Cleveland and much of surrounding Northeast Ohio. WKLV-FM's transmitter is located in Warrensville Heights.
This station was built and signed on by Douglas G. Ovaitt Sr. and Jr. as WDGO in 1961. Sold twice in the following year, the second sale was to Cecil "Pat" Patrick and Robert Conrad, who relaunched the station in November 1962 as WCLV. Featuring a fine arts and classical music format, WCLV began originating live broadcasts of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1965, which it and its successor stations have continued in the years since. The station also launched an annual fundraising drive marathon for the Orchestra in 1970, which was soon imitated in other markets. Announcer Martin Perlich became an early champion of progressive rock with the Friday night Perlich Project, the first such program of its kind in Cleveland radio. Soloist A. Grace Lee Mims hosted a long-running weekly series devoted to contributions to the fine arts made by African Americans. WCLV became the home station for Karl Haas' Adventures in Good Music and the City Club of Cleveland's Friday Forum, establishing a radio syndication unit for those and other programs including Weekend Radio, an extension of a Saturday night variety show Conrad hosted.
With studios and transmitter originally in Mayfield Heights, the station upgraded its signal twice, moving facilities to the top of the Terminal Tower in 1968 and again to Warrensville Heights in 1986. Widespread consolidation in the late 1990s resulted in WCLV becoming the only commercial radio station licensed to the city that was still locally owned. To perpetuate the classical format, Conrad initiated a complex seven-station intellectual property and asset swap in 2001, selling the signal to Salem Communications in exchange for from Salem and from Clear Channel. Upon taking over on July 3, 2001, Salem relaunched as WFHM-FM, with a Christian contemporary format as "The Fish", whose airstaff included several veteran personalities formerly associated with secular radio formats. The station was sold to EMF in January 2025 and consequently switched to carrying K-Love.
Classical era (1961–2001) Establishment as WDGO Douglas G. Ovaitt, Jr., half of a father-son real estate developer team from Geauga County (father Douglas Ovaitt, Sr. was also the mayor of South Euclid), filed paperwork with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on February 3, 1960, to construct a radio station at , and was granted a construction permit on September 20. Ovaitt originally considered building an AM station in Chardon, Ohio, but began pursuing an FM station after realizing the signal limitations of an AM facility. Named after both father and son, WDGO's transmitter and studios were co-located at Eastgate Shopping Center in Mayfield Heights, where Ovaitt constructed several storefronts. The frequency became available for broadcasting after WCUY in Cleveland Heights moved from to following a transmitter and power upgrade.
WDGO took to the air on April 10, 1961, carrying a fine art format focused on classical music. Plain Dealer critic Russell W. Kane lauded their intent but questioned its commercial viability, saying, "... right or wrong, they are entering an area with laws just as inexorable as those of the real jungle, laws that The Law and Mr. Jones is finding tough to repeal or evade." The station's classical programming was supplemented by concert recordings from the International Good Music service. WDGO also featured a daily afternoon program oriented towards school-aged children. Ovaitt Sr.'s wife owned French poodles and included one of them on station letterhead, giving rise to the transposed misidentification of "WDOG".
The Ovaitts sold WDGO to Janssen Broadcasting Company on November 17, 1961; Ovaitt, Jr. retained a minority ownership stake. Under Janssen ownership, WDGO began broadcasting in multiplexed stereo, and identified any monaural recordings for the benefit of listeners tuning into the station with stereo equipment. WDGO's stereo signal, however, encountered multiple weak spots due to the transmitter being in Mayfield Heights instead of a more centralized location like Seven Hills or North Royalton. WDGO was also the only FM station in Cleveland to broadcast classical music full-time, as other signals only programmed classical on a part-time basis.
Sale to Radio Seaway, change to WCLV WDGO was sold for the second time in less than a year in August 1962 to Radio Seaway, Inc., a partnership headed by the station's sales manager Cecil K. "Pat" Patrick, and Robert Conrad, program director and co-founder of Detroit classical station WDTM. Patrick considered buying the station but had no experience in programming, and was introduced to Conrad from his network of contacts. Approved on October 18, 1962, the sale price was misidentified as $38,000, which Patrick corrected to $80,000.
Intending to create a new image for the station, Patrick and Conrad requested new WCLV calls; as Conrad told the Plain Dealer, "... some of the announcers have trouble saying WDGO, and some of our listeners address us as WDOG, and even WGOD." Patrick and Conrad chose WCLV after realizing no other station in Cleveland was named after the city, and were inspired by WNYC in New York City, WDET-FM in Detroit and WBUF in Buffalo, New York. The WCLV calls took effect on November 1, 1962; programming on that day included a Unity Center meditation, Broadway show tunes, folk music, and a recording of Romeo and Juliet starring Claire Bloom and Albert Finney. Patrick and Conrad promised to maintain the existing classical format, along with adding more live programming and linking with New York station WQXR-FM. The station operated at a loss financially for the first four years under Patrick and Conrad, with both earning less money than the other staff, and operated with frugality.
WCLV launched their signature program, Symphony at Seven, on October 5, 1964, with Cleveland Trust as the title sponsor; Cleveland Trust's sponsorship was the largest such contract in the station's history to that point and it, along with the program, continues to this day through successor banks Ameritrust, Society Bank and KeyBank. Heinen's became the title sponsor of Morning at the Pops on February 4, 1965, and eventually the title sponsor for the evening Concert Hall, the latter airing nightly over WCLV and its successor station through 2003. The Cleveland Catholic Diocese leased a WCLV SCA subchannel beginning in 1965 to offer in-school instructional programming. Commercials with jingles were generally rejected as they did not fit the image of the station.
A classical music mainstay
Conrad and Patrick welcomed competition from other FM stations that carried classical music, believing it would improve all the stations and provide additional listenership, and successfully persuaded NBC to retain the format over KYW-FM when they retook ownership of the station as WKYC-FM. This coincided with an overall move of classical from AM to FM; while two other FM stations still had classical by 1967, only WCLV featured live programming. WCLV added Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts in 1969 after WGAR dropped it, becoming the first FM-only affiliate in the Opera's network of AM stations. The Opera broadcasts were mono-only until 1973, when the network began offering them in stereo; the Opera continues to be heard over WCLV's successor station into the present day. The City Club of Cleveland's Friday Forum moved to WCLV on October 9, 1970, after WGAR also dropped it. The Friday Forum originated over WCLV and its successor station until 2008, when it moved to WCPN.
The station's reception issues worsened in the mid-1960s, when WLDM in Detroit (which also broadcast at ) underwent a power increase. WCLV's transmitter was thus moved to downtown Cleveland's Terminal Tower in 1968, with the antenna mounted on the tower's flagpole; new studios were constructed in the tower's fifteenth floor. Patrick estimated the new transmitter would add up to 300,000 potential listeners and improve reception both in downtown and to the west of Cleveland. WCLV's transmitter height increased from at Eastgate to at the Tower, but it came with a reduction in transmitter power output to 8.9 kW, and 21.9 kW vertical effective radiated power, in order to protect WLDM.
WCLV was among the first FM stations in the market to broadcast continuously through the overnight hours. The Friday overnight slot took a much different tone with booth announcer Martin Perlich. A graduate of Columbia University and University of Chicago and a student at Juilliard School, Perlich debuted The Perlich Project in late 1966, a mixture of classical with progressive rock selections along with interviews, personal comments and editorials on events of the day. The Perlich Project was one of the earliest such shows on commercial radio in Cleveland, as similar shows debuted over ethnic station WZAK and Top 40 station WIXY, both in the overnight hours. Perlich also hosted Audition Booth, devoted to newer classical recordings, operated local music store chain Discount Records and once conducted interviews with Orchestra director George Szell and Pink Floyd in the same hour. Perlich was dismissed from WCLV in October 1970 after growing facial hair that ran counter to the Orchestra's public image, and subsequently joined WNCR.
WCLV started recording performances by the Cleveland Orchestra in 1963, and began airing the Orchestra's 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon concerts on November 1, 1965, both live and live to tape with Conrad as host and commentator. This followed similar moves made by the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This marked a return to live radio for the Orchestra as WGAR originated broadcasts for CBS Radio from 1941 to 1962. WCLV invested heavily in recording equipment at Severance Hall, owing to the demands of then-director Szell. Prior to the first broadcast, Conrad and Perlich co-anchored live coverage of the Orchestra's return to Cleveland from a tour in Europe and the Soviet Union. The Orchestra immediately boasted affiliates in the United States and Canada, and on both commercial and non-commercial educational stations; revenue generated from the tape rentals went to the Orchestra's pension fund. Patrick led the drive to acquire the Orchestra, later saying, "I wanted people in the street to hear it. I thought I'd be doing something great for the arts. I never thought of syndication, but it exploded." Conrad remained as lead commentator for the Orchestra broadcasts through the late 2010s, a record in American radio.