Stan Savran
1947-2023
In every city and every town, there are members of the local television and radio media who are so established, so entrenched, and, yes, so well loved, that they become an integral part of the fabric of the communities in which they work and live, and they feel like a member of the family to the viewers and listeners. Pittsburgh lost one of those people this week with the death of sportscaster and sports talk show host Stan Savran at the age of 76.
A native of Cleveland, Ohio and a graduate of Miami of Ohio University, Stan, like most people in that business, worked at a number of smaller market radio and TV stations at the start of his career. He was working in Orlando, FL when he answered an ad for a radio gig at station WWSW in Pittsburgh. He arrived in The Burgh in 1976, and there he stayed, working at two different TV stations and at least four different radio station for the next 47 years.
When I moved back to Pittsburgh in 1978, Stan was doing a one hour sports talk show on KQV, going head-to-head against Myron Cope on WTAE 1250. Eventually, he moved over to WTAE, working the 8:00 to 9:00 PM hour following Cope's two hour gig from 6:00 to 8:00, Monday through Friday. These shows, along with Sam Nover's competing show on KQV constituted, in my view, the Golden Age of Sports Talk Radio in Pittsburgh. Hard as it might be to believe in this day and age, these were the only hours of sports talk radio that existed on the air back in the seventies and into the eighties. No hipster hosts spouting profanity and hot takes 24/7. It was civil and knowledgeable sports talk, and we will never see its like again.
After he left the WTAE evening job, he did an afternoon drive time talk show, I honestly can't even remember which station it was on, and listening to that show made my drive home a pleasure every day, and more than once Stan would take a call from "Bob in the car" during those days. I can remember that he once interviewed Mary Levy, long after Levy retired from the Buff Bills, and it was an absolutely terrific interview. I emailed Stan at the station telling him just how enjoyable that show was and received a very kind response from him.
Local radio and television has been awash these last two days with tributes to Stan. About how knowledgeable and well prepared he always was. Joe Starkey said that he learned early on that when he would be a guest on Stan's show in his role as Penguins beat writer for the Trib, he had better be well prepared because he knew he was going to get hard questions on the state of the Pens. Stan never served up softballs to his guests. The tributes also came from the people that he covered for the Pirates, Steelers, Penguins, Pitt, and Penn State (where he did football play-by-play for a number of years). Hardworking, honest, knowledgable, and always fair in his criticism. That was Stan Savran.
Perhaps the best stories came from his "Sports Beat" partner of nineteen years, Guy Junker. You know...."Stan, Guy. Love the show." Junker told of a relationship that was closer than brothers. I'll repeat one story that I heard him tell....
One of Stan's first jobs was reading sports news and selling advertising on some dinky radio station in Lawton, Oklahoma. One day he came in and excitedly told the station manager that he had just nailed down sponsorships for the station's sports talk show. "We don't have a sports talk show" said the Suit. "We do now" said Stan "and I'm hosting it."
Like I said, the kid from Cleveland became as integral a part of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh sports scene as anyone can imagine. He will be missed.
RIP Stan Savran. We all loved the show.
Contrary to popular belief,
this Cup was not named after him.
During one of the Penguins' Stanley cup runs, Stan posed with this fan. Anyone recognize her?
On the job at a couple of local sports venues...
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