WVIZ

WVIZ (Digital channel 26, PSIP 25.1), is a PBS member station serving its city of license, Cleveland, Ohio. The non-commercial outlet is the flagship station of parent owner Ideastream, with studios located in the Idea Center at Playhouse Square at 1375 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, 44115, and on the web at www.wviz.org.

Station History

On February 7, 1965, at 10:42 a.m., WVIZ signed on the air for the first time, broadcasting the word “THINK” from its first home, Max Hayes Trade School in Cleveland. The new WVIZ broadcast 50 hours a week—weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. and on Sundays from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. WVIZ became the 100th public television station in the nation.

In the early 1960s, Betty Cope, then a director at WEWS-TV 5, began working with a community group interested in activating educational television on Channel 25 for the Greater Cleveland area. In 1963, thanks to start-up grants from The Cleveland Foundation and the Educational Television Association for Metropolitan Cleveland, matched by a United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare grant in 1964, educational television in Northeast Ohio was becoming a reality.