Public radio offerings change on local radio dials

NORWALK — National Public Radio offerings from stations in the Cleveland area have been scrambled, affecting radio listeners in the Sandusky and Norwalk tuning in for classical music or NPR news. As the Register reported last year, public radio stations WCLV, WKSU and WCPN announced changes in formats and broadcasting frequencies. The changes took effect on Monday. The strongest NPR signal in the Sandusky-Norwalk area comes from WNRK, 90.7 FM, a repeater in Norwalk that rebroadcasts WKSU, the NPR station associated with Kent State University. Until Monday, the station carried NPR news but also provided many hours of classical music. But WKSU has now gone to 24-hour news and public affairs programming with no music. The full schedule is available at wksu.org. Meanwhile, WCLV, the classical music station based in Cleveland, has moved its location on the radio dial from 104.9 to 90.3. The 90.3 location has a stronger signal, so many people in the Sandusky-Norwalk area who could not receive WCLV before may be able to pick it up now. (The 104.9 slot is now used for WKSU broadcasting.) WCLV broadcasts classical music for much of the day and the evening, although from midnight to 6 a.m., it carries jazz. The WCLV schedule is available at wclv.org. Many listeners in Sandusky should be able to also obtain classical music from WGTE, the 91.3 FM classical music station based in WGTE. The station, which generally has a strong signal in Sandusky, carries NPR's main news programs but also has plenty of classical music and devotes significant time to jazz during the weekend. Its schedule is available at wgte.org. Paul Moon, a devoted classical music and opera fan in Port Clinton, reports that the 90.3 broadcast from WCLV is too weak to be useful for Port Clinton residents. Moon said he listens instead to WGTE, and to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. radio station CBE-FM in Windsor, Canada, 89.9 FM. If you can't tune in your favorite station on the radio, you should be able to get it on the internet. All NPR stations now provide feeds of their broadcasts on the internet. The feeds are available on the home pages for the stations, and also on internet radio apps for smartphones and tablets.