Friday, March 09, 2007

Your Weekend WKNR Update

Next up in the rotation on the ever-changing host lineup of Good Karma sports WKNR/850 "ESPN 850"'s "Saturday Morning Sports Show": Chuck Booms.

Well, not just Chuck, as the former FOX Sports Radio host ("Kiley and Booms") and Euclid resident will be joined by Cleveland Plain Dealer Cleveland Cavaliers beat writer Branson Wright from 9-noon Saturday - presumably to talk All Things Hoops, in the midst of the MAC Tournament, the upcoming NCAA "March Madness" and the Cavaliers' own run to the NBA playoffs.

WKNR's website headlines the appearance of "Branson and Booms", despite the fact that, as far as we know, Mr. Wright has no radio hosting experience. Maybe we'll be surprised on Saturday...or maybe they're just playing on the name of Chuck's old radio show by putting him in the second slot in the show name.

Mr. Booms, in whatever role, is the latest Cleveland sports media personality to take the slot. FSN Ohio's Les Levine has done it both alone and with former WKNR personality (and new "Cleveland Rants" co-host) Kendall Lewis. New station mid-morning host Tony Rizzo also did it once, before ascending to the weekday schedule.

We should hold a contest to see who has a shot at the Saturday show in a week's time. Any guesses? We can tell you one thing - it won't be your Primary Editorial Voice(tm).

While we're in a rotation mood, OMW notes that we've heard any number of different voices doing the sports updates on Good Karma's smaller station, WWGK/1540 "KNR2".

Both men originally hired for the job - before Good Karma bought AM 850 - have moved on to other work for the stations.

Original 1540 morning update anchor Aaron Goldhammer is now on the 850 side as producer/sidekick for the aforementioned Mr. Rizzo. Original 1540 afternoon update anchor Bernard Bokenyi is doing a myriad of other work as well.

That's brought some of those pre-Good Karma voices over to "KNR2". We've heard WKNR staffers Josh Sabo and Neil Bender doing the 1540 updates in recent days, among others.

For them, the good news is that it gives them regular airtime.

The bad news? It's on a 1,000 watt daytime station that's the little brother to the station everyone knows about. But "KNR2's" profile is being raised by cross promotion on the 50,000 watt mothership.

Good Karma has launched full-time streaming for WWGK on ESPNCleveland.com. For whatever reason, it's not displayed with a "Listen Live" link - you have to click on the station's logo on the right hand side.

And it still brings up the misspelled underlying URL the station has used for local streaming since, well, Tony Rizzo's first appearance on 1540 doing that Ohio State/Michigan pre-game show. (Clevenlands? Since when did typos have to stick?)

OMW reader and regular tipster Nathan Obral tells us that the "KNR2" streaming audio delivers the straight FOX Sports Radio feed during hours WWGK is not on the air, with no local inserts.

The station has also resurrected the old WKNR audio stream for the MAC Tournament games...though it comes up with "File not found" as of this writing. Consultants charge money for this sort of thing, and we give it to the good folks at Good Karma for free...

Back to Chuck Booms for a second.

When we heard him call into afternoon driver Kenny Roda's show to talk about the Saturday show, we couldn't help but wonder...did Chuck Booms always sound like he was doing a Dennis Miller impersonation?

We know Miller is about to launch a Westwood One syndicated talk show (non-sports). But when we heard Booms call Roda "Kenneth", we started to listen for arcane sports and cultural references.

Maybe it was just a phone line thing...

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is it still possible to stream 1540? I'd rather listen to the Fox Sports Morning show than Mike Golic and that other Mike guy who sounds like he just took a toke of helium.

Anonymous said...

Wow, finally some talent on the weekends and a departure from "Board-op" radio. Booms is one of the premier talents on the radio (although funny to hear him act buddy buddy with Roda even though he has bashed Roda and the station behind the scenes repeatedly over the past 8 years).

Booms belongs in national syndication. His show with Kiley was very successful and his appearances on "Politically Incorrect" were can't miss television.

Anonymous said...

Booms is a hack. There's a reason he can't hold a job. As for the Dennis MIller impression, that's a great observation. He's a bad comic who doesnt know that much about sports.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous number 3 sounds like there's something personal going on there. The reason he "couldn't hold a job" at Fox Sports had nothing to do with his lack of talent or the show's lack of ratings.

Anonymous said...

I'm anonymous number 3 and i have nothing against Booms personaly. I just don't understand why anyone thinks he's talented. As a comedian, my opinion is he's amazingly unfunny, as a sport talk host, my opinion is not very good or informed. It always sounds to me like he's trying too hard. That's all. Just my opinion.

Anonymous said...

I think Craig has done a good job up to this point, but it's time to hire a PD. 2 heads are better than 1.

Ohio Media Watch said...

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--The Management