Pete Franklin

Pete Franklin (1927-2004), nicknamed "The King" and "Pigskin Pete", was an American sports talk radio host who worked in Cleveland, New York and San Francisco. He is widely credited with pioneering the more aggressive, acerbic and attention-grabbing form of the genre, which has since been adopted by generations of sports media personalities, and bringing it to a multi-national listening audience.

Early Life and Career

Franklin was born September 22, 1927 in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts. His first broadcasting job was for Armed Forces Radio, and his first radio station job was in 1952 in Oakdale, Louisiana. "I worked 70 hours a week, and my main job was to get to the station early and kill the snakes with a baseball bat," he said of his Louisiana assignments. "They came out of the swamp to the heat of the generator. And I read the farm news. The glamour of show business."

He later worked at radio stations in North Carolina, Georgia, New Jersey, California and Texas, often as a disc jockey. He worked as operations director for WOIO in Canton, Ohio, before moving to WERE 1300 AM in Cleveland in 1967 to host a sports talk show from 11 pm to midnight.

WWWE in Cleveland

The zenith of Franklin's career came when...
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