Roger's Exit

You heard about it first here on your Mighty Blog of Fun(tm). OK, so maybe you heard it first on WTAM/1100 afternoon drive host Mike Trivisonno's show, when Triv brought long-simmering rumors about his print-based nemesis to light.

Roger Brown has written his final column for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which appears in Sunday's paper. Brown took a buyout from the newspaper, which has been offering them to dozens of employees in an effort to cut costs.

And it's about as typical a Roger Brown column as you'd expect out of the PD's sports columnist who rolled out a weekly column dedicated to local sports media and personalities on Mondays...plus an extra item or two the other days of the week.

His parting shots aren't limited to media in this final column.

No, he's now officially on record with his laundry list of mostly complaints and predictions about the local professional sports teams, even going so far as to predict an early exit in Round 1 of the NBA playoffs by your Cleveland Cavaliers...though he says he likes the "early swagger" of Indians GM Mark Shapiro.

Since we're media-related here, we'll note that Roger has an item about Cavaliers GM Danny Ferry being unhappy with a recent news item out of WOIO/WUAB's "19 Action News", though it doesn't appear to have the same heft as the whole Browns/WOIO tiff which cost the CBS affiliate the team's pre-season contract.

(And WUAB is mostly "along for the ride" with FOX Sports Net Ohio in regards to the Cavs these days, only carrying five simulcast games this year.)

The Artful Roger also reports that SportsTime Ohio will carry a new presumably Cavaliers-themed talk show with PD Cavs beat writer Branson Wright, Larry Durstin and...ta da!...local media personality Chuck Booms, the Euclid native recently bounced out of his national gig at FOX Sports Radio.

And from our "How's This for Bad Timing?" department:

Booms' departure from FSR came before he could be heard in his hometown again, now that Salem sports WKNR/850 has become an FSR affiliate.

Booms had been heard in parts of the area on another FSR affiliate, Elyria-Lorain Broadcasting's WEOL/930 Elyria. FSR's third Northeast Ohio outlet, Media-Com daytimer WJMP/1520 Kent-Akron-Cleveland-Mars-Jupiter-Pluto, signed off each day long before Booms' weekend nighttime show.

Back to Roger: his final column fulfilled our Minimum Daily Quota of real estate news, with word of the sale of former Cleveland Browns player Jason Fisk's Strongsville home for $355,000.

No word on if the Akron Beacon Journal's George M. Thomas will take up the baton and report Sports Personality Real Estate news in his new Tuesday sports media column...

Anyway, Roger got a lot of attention in this area, among both sports personalities and media personalities, and not all of it favorable.

Though saying it achieved "such popularity and influence" in the Northeast Ohio sports world may be a bit of extended self back-patting by Mr. Brown, there's no question that everyone in town read his column...