The three stations share studio facilities at the Idea Center on Playhouse Square in Downtown Cleveland; WVIZ's transmitter is located in suburban Parma, Ohio.

For most of its first three decades of service, under general manager Betty Cope, the station intensively focused on producing and broadcasting educational television programming for schools.

This began to change after Cope's 1993 retirement, with the introduction of a daytime schedule of children's programs as well as a weekly arts magazine and documentaries focused on area history.

In 2000, WVIZ merged with WCPN, then Cleveland's NPR news, talk and jazz station;[a] the combined venture, known as Ideastream, then moved to new studios in Playhouse Square in 2006.

[15] Cleveland Broadcasting, owners of local radio station WERE (1300 AM), offered ETAMC usage of their tower site in North Royalton through a lease of $1 a month.

[19][20] WJW-TV, along with KYW-TV and WEWS-TV, had previously allocated daily 15-minute blocks to air educational programming produced by WBOE staff, with $30,000 worth of television sets furnished to the classrooms.

[26][32] The station began broadcasting color programming in 1967;[33] that year, it left the trade school for larger quarters in the former Marks Tractor building on Brookpark Road,[34][35] and it built a new, taller tower at North Royalton to improve its coverage area.

[44] Cleveland Public Radio (CPR) was set up as an outside organization aiming to bring a full-time NPR station to the city and made several rejected offers to buy WBOE.

[45] The Cleveland school system found itself in financial turmoil following years of litigation over segregation practices,[46] a failed tax levy[47] and fears of white flight.

[58] While WVIZ was a member station of National Educational Television (NET), which was replaced by PBS in 1970,[28][59] its local program production nearly exclusively focused on instructional shows for schools.

[64] Broadcast journalist Hugh Danaceau hosted a series of weekly public affairs shows over WVIZ in addition to anchoring the city council telecasts and local election coverage.

[41] Staff from WVIZ's nascent years, including future WEWS Morning Exchange host Fred Griffith, aspired to have the station be a program supplier to PBS, but a lack of people, money and cohesive vision scuttled those efforts.

[57] Some business leaders disagreed with the approach taken in constructing the channel 25 facility, believing that a site to the southeast near Streetsboro would provide better regional coverage and serve more people in cities such as Canton and Youngstown.

Joining the station out of concern for WVIZ's underutilized potential and "dismal image" among the public, Goulden was responsible for the creation of several programs and series, such as Kovels on Collecting, Producers Showcase, Medi-Scene,[75] Dimension, and CookSmart.

Between 1965 and 1987, WVIZ produced just two series for national distribution, both featuring antique collectors Ralph and Terry Kovel (in 1972 and 1987),[57] but never originated a program slotted for prime time airing over the network.

"[74] PBS executive Dee Brock lauded the station for their commitment to school programming but felt more could be done to accentuate local production, citing KLRU's success originating Austin City Limits for the network.

KCET, which originated Cosmos: A Personal Voyage for PBS, came close to bankruptcy in 1982 after absorbing significant cost overruns producing the series.

[57] Severe cuts in federal government aid to public broadcasting in the early 1980s forced stations to operate on small budgets and forego local productions.

[42] While monetary issues were a major consideration, Cope also attributed the comparatively small role of WVIZ in the network to its intensive focus on educational programming; the greater resources of stations on the East and West Coasts; and the reticence of George Szell, longtime head of the Cleveland Orchestra, to have its concerts televised.

[57] Originally airing weekly, Medi-Scene was reduced to a monthly series after WVIZ refused to seek underwriting from health-care providers, fearing possible interference.

The station was more invested in program development than risk taking and found it difficult to secure local underwriting for shows like The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour.

[77] Despite this, WVIZ was financially sound in the late 1980s, with revenues exceeding expenses and a lucrative annual on-air auction[78] as opposed to WCPN, which saw a decline in foundation grant support, turnover in the CPR board,[79] and cutbacks to their news department.

[85] Following the practice of other public television stations under PBS's Ready-to-Learn initiative, WVIZ shifted its daytime schedule to primarily children's shows on September 19, 1994, originally branded as "KidTV on VIZ".

[87] Wareham began a five-year program with the goal of bringing WVIZ closer to three peer stations—KCTS-TV in Seattle, KTCA in Minneapolis, and KVIE in Sacramento—in viewer support and partnerships.

[91] Broadcasting veteran Bob Becker and wife Luanne Bole-Becker[92] produced multiple documentaries, including a local tie-in to the Ken Burns miniseries Baseball,[93] an examination of urban sprawl in the region,[94] and other history-driven fare.

[100] Privately, Wareham and Jensen continued to pitch the idea of a CPR-ETAMC merger through multiple board meetings and with the advice of area foundations and legal representation.

[102] After years of deliberation, CPR and ETAMC agreed to a merger of equals on October 13, 2000, to establish a unified source for public broadcasting[98] along with capitalizing on the potential of both online and digital media.

[103] The proposed digital-capable studio facility for WVIZ was realized with the Idea Center at Playhouse Square in the Cleveland Theater District; both it and WCPN moved there in the fall of 2005.

[108][109] The changes, coupled with the loss of several WCPN news staffers and an overall blending of off- and on-air staffs, yielded criticism in 2005 among listeners who felt WVIZ now took priority in Ideastream, a charge Jensen disputed.

[105] Several multiplatform projects focusing on Greater Cleveland's economic issues debuted over WVIZ and WCPN during the 2000s through partnerships with The Plain Dealer and Case Western Reserve University.