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Employing a highly opinionated, in-your-face style, Franklin was hugely successful in the local ratings while also building a national audience because of WWWE's 50,000-watt, clear-channel signal.
''Pete was way ahead of his time. He helped make sports talk radio what it is today,'' said Bill Needle, the Fox Sports Ohio announcer who was Franklin's ''Sportsline'' producer in 1979.
''As bombastic as he could be on the air, Pete was as quiet and reserved off the air,'' Needle added. ''And he knew more about jazz music than he did about sports.''
A native of Boston, Franklin had worked at radio stations in Los Angeles and Michigan before he took a job at WERE in 1966 as host of an all-night general talk show. He also started doing ''Sportsline'' on WERE.
In 1972, Franklin made the move to WWWE. ''Sportsline'' aired from 7 p.m. to midnight, except on those nights when Franklin followed the station's broadcasts of Indians' and Cavaliers' games.
Franklin was a fixture in the Indians' press box at the old Cleveland Stadium and at the Cavaliers' courtside press tables at Cleveland Arena and the Richfield Coliseum.
After the games, tens of thousands of faithful ''Sportsline'' listeners would tune in to hear what Franklin had to say about the games and the players.
''There is an entire generation of Cleveland sports fans who owe a big part of their passion for local teams to Peter J. Franklin,'' said Bob DiBiasio, the Indians' vice president of public relations.
Greg Brinda, now the sports director of WKNR-850 AM, was working as a sports-talk show host at WERE while Franklin was at WWWE.
''I must have sat next to Pete in the press box at that old stadium for 500 baseball games,'' Brinda said. ''The most amazing thing is that he's been out of the market for nearly 20 years and he's still an icon.''
During his heydays on ''Sportsline,'' Franklin openly courted controversy with his sometimes abrupt handling of callers and for the vehemence of his railings against local pro sports franchises and their top executives.
In 1983, former Cavaliers owner Ted Stepien filed a defamation of character suit against Franklin and WWWE after the popular sports talker referred to Stepien on the air as a ''certifiable nut and pathological liar.'' The suit was dismissed in 1986.
Franklin had other detractors.
Hal Lebovitz, the veteran sports columnist of The News-Herald and The Morning Journal, was sports editor of the Plain Dealer during Franklin's tenure in Cleveland.
''Franklin used the newspapers to gain notoriety for himself. He'd rip us and try to cash in on the controversy,'' Lebovitz said. ''I didn't really give a darn what he said because I knew it was all part of his act.''
From 1985 until 1987, Franklin also was writing thrice-weekly columns for The News-Herald and The Morning Journal.
In May 1987, Franklin announced he was leaving WWWE and Cleveland to accept a two-year, $600,000 offer to host the afternoon-drive show WFAN-AM, an all-sports station in New York City.
A few days later, Franklin suffered a heart attack that necessitated quadruple bypass surgery at Cleveland Clinic. He made the move to WFAN in September 1987, after doctors cleared him to return to work.
Franklin left WFAN after two years and moved to San Diego. For a short time, he taped on-air segments for WWWE from his home in California, In 1991, he moved to San Francisco to host the afternoon-drive talk show on KNBR. He retired from the station in 1998.
''Pete brought sports-talk radio to a whole new level in the Bay Area. He quickly became known as Ôthe King,''' KNBR program director Bob Agnew said.
Agnew said Franklin's wife, Pat, decided to wait a few weeks before going public with news of her husband's death. Franklin also is survived by two grown children.
