The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 40

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"It was shock radio. I think he's lost most all of his credibility, and his ratings reflect it." True, Brown's station the fledgling all-sports WKNR is far from a ratings giant. But see whether you can detect a trend here: In the Cleveland ratings book last spring, WKNR averaged 1,900 listeners at any given time. In the next book, it averaged 2,800. Then 4,700.

Then 5,300. If you don't have a calculator handy, that's an overall increase of 179 percent. During the course of a week, WKNR now draws more than 102,200 sets of ears. One of the primary reasons is Brown, who not only is the most intriguing sports-talk host on the Northeast Ohio airwaves but the first since the 1987 departure of Pete Franklin to rile up the masses. Brown didn't step into a void.

At least five stations in Northeast Ohio regularly air sports talk shows. Although none is a ratings blockbuster, advertisers often love them because the shows pull in 25-to 54-year-old males the nation's chief car buyers, beer drinkers and hardware-store habitues. Shreds of truth in his rips Most people who run talk-radio stations couldn't care less what listeners are saying about their announcers as long as they're saying something. So positioning yourself as the "heavy" is a great strategy in a radio market where announcers routinely root for the home teams. But it's not as simple as grabbing a microphone and ripping the local heroes.

Brown is just talented enough, and knows just enough about sports, to be truly dangerous. There are shreds of truth in many of his contentions. Until this season, Nance did seem to become AWOL when there was a vital game to win, a last-second shot to make. Pull out some videotapes of playoff games from earlier seasons. Check it out.

But Tait is right in saying that the classy Nance wouldn't dream of providing Brown with some unsolicited dental work. The 6-foot, 10-inch Nance did, however, manage to get in a few verbal jabs early in the season. Nance was dining at the Courtyard in Brecksville, a favorite haunt of several Cavs. Steve Ken-invited Brown to come across the room and meet Nance. "Larry out of the blue says, 'Is this an act, or do you really be process.

I think he has a lot of talent." The last opinion apparently is shared by other programmers, because rumors have been circulating for weeks that Brown is headed to bigger and better things in Washington, D.C. "I have had offers in three or four cities," Brown responds. "Naturally, I'm hot and I want to capitalize on it. That goes well for here, too. I think they (WKNR managers) have to recognize what they have.

Sometimes they don't. "I always say, 'I don't want to be Michael I don't have to be Geoff (Sindelar, whose WKNR show follows Brown's). I don't have to get his money, I don't have to get his respect. But I do have to be Scottie Pippen. I can't be (Chicago bench-warmer) Will Perdue." Among the assignments he hates is holding the fort between the end of an Indians game and the next regular show.

"Filling in for 10 minutes after an Indians game is not for the guy who builds all the ratings Monday through Friday and is the most talked-about guy. It's for the guy who's part-time. "I'm looking for something a little better. A little bit more respect. You're always looking.

You can't not look." He's always late Respect and cash usually overlap. Brown and his fiancee, who live in Sagamore Hills, own only one car. He gets up at 7 a.m. to drive her to the bus so she can reach her job at a clothing store in the Galleria in downtown Cleveland. Not exactly the lifestyle of a star.

Maybe that's one reason Brown is always running late. One recent afternoon, he shows up a half-hour tardy for an interview with a reporter, then dashes off, still late, to the announcer's booth in the heart of the WKNR studios in Broadview Heights. Pulling on his Sony headphones, he launches into a sing-song taunt: "Laaaaaarry, Laaaaaarry. Suddenly, Brown is shouting: "Do you hear this? Hey, Larry Nance! Four of 12! Way to show up, bud! Way to be there when it counts! Non-existent!" WKNR's five phone lines flicker like fireflies. For the record, the next evening, in one of biggest games in Cavalier history, Larry Nance turns in an all-star performance: 25 points, 16 rebounds, five assists.

In yo' face, Peter Brown. lieve Brown recalls. "And I said, 'I don't give out my secrets. Do you give out your secrets about how you hit a jump The conversation sort of broke down. He said, 'OK, I'm done with I said, 'Well, wait a minute, who are you? "That highbrow attitude made my appreciation for ragging him even better." To Brown's credit, he doesn't just lob his cheap shots and hide.

He attends the games. He shows his face in the locker rooms. Plenty of talk hosts don't, because they either are lazy or afraid of encountering a raging player. Still, Tait and Nance are not the only folks who have no intention of organizing a Peter Brown Fan Club. Sportswriters recite a litany of complaints, including: Brown rips them without even reading the whole story.

Brown tries to pick verbal fights with them in public settings to gain media attention. One writer ridicules Brown for asking Philadelphia 76er Charles Barkley for an autograph in the locker room an absolute taboo for a "real" journalist. "I did it for charity reasons," Brown says. And what charity was that? Pause. "Uh, I think I remember.

(Pause.) It wasn't in Cleveland. It was for a friend of mine in New Jersey. (Long pause.) United Way, maybe. I can't remember." He'd rather not be in Philly If his act sometimes seems immature, you should have seen him in Philadelphia. Born and raised in Manhattan, Brown was thrown into the fifth-largest market in America after only two years of professional experience in relatively tiny New Orleans.

"People here never took to a 24-year-old from New York, laundered through New Orleans," says Joe Logan, radio columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. "He just didn't develop as soon as they'd hoped." Combine Brown's youthfulness with the ongoing animosity between New Yorkers and PhLadel-phians, and he was starting with two strikes against him. Says Tom Bigby, the WIP program director who hired and fired Brown: "I think Peter never understood that radio is radio and sports is sports. You have Led Zeppelin stations and Barry Manilow stations. But you can't play Led Zeppelin on a Barry Manilow station.

It's part of the growing Talker Brown, a New Yorker, worked in New Orleans, got hired, fired in Philly Continued from Page Dl doesn't look anything like the mental image you conjure up before seeing him. He looks, well, let's go for the objective, Peter Brown-style, approach here: The guy looks like a nerd. Curly black hair. Glasses. Plump.

During the aforementioned media shootout, he bricked seven of his eight shots, including two air balls. He claims he played freshman baseball at Tulane. If that's true, the school's baseball program must be in serious trouble. On the radio, though, Brown is the closest you can get these days to a true sports-talk star. Does the acerbic 26-year-old fabricate some of his views to get a reaction? Certainly.

Why, during a playoff game against Boston, while watching the action from a runway between the court and the locker room, he actually used the word "we" when referring to the Cavaliers. More than once. But don't tell anybody. When asked to acknowledge that his on-air stance is at least partly calculated, at least partly a concerted effort to gain attention, he says, "Somewhat, yeah. (But) I don't sit down every day and say, 'Let's see what angle can I take to try to upset people or try to get phone "You couldn't possibly do that.

I'm not that good, first of all, to think of what it is. It just happens. "But the more people call up and go, 'Yea, our Cavs, they're the the more it pushes me the other way just so I have a balanced view to look at myself. When I listen to Joe Tait or Greg (Brinda) and I hear that rah-rah, I go, 'Lemme do the other thing just so I can get a balance for my own The "other thing" often consists of trying to trash local legends such as Tait. Throughout the season, for instance, Brown identified Cavalier Larry Nance as an "overrated" player, an athlete who "disappears during big games." Says Tait: "(Brown) picked a couple of targets and jumped on them.

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