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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