As ESPN Radio arrives, Wilson signs off

File this under Twists of Fate, Radio Division.

Yesterday was ESPN Radio's first full day on the air in the Boston market on 890 and 1400 AM.

Tonight is the final broadcast for ESPN Radio original Chuck Wilson on the 7 p.m.-1 a.m. ''Game Night" show.

Twenty years ago, Wilson was a legend, especially to those of us who lived north of Boston and heard about him from friends and family in Rhode Island.

When ESPN Radio began, the first broadcasts were Saturday and Sunday nights, 6 p.m.-1 a.m., with Wilson and Tony Bruno as two members of the three-man crew. The others? One night it was Keith Olbermann, the other Mike Tirico.

News updates, interviews, and laughs were the order of the day.

ESPN let Wilson know back in January that his contract wouldn't be renewed. ''A business decision. I was making too much money," said Wilson, who has worked with more than 200 co-hosts over the years. ''Probably closer to 250," he said.

It's a tribute to the man and his bosses that he's stayed on the air until tonight's swan song. ''You're working a long shift, talking with callers, watching games on the monitors, listening to producers talking in your ear. There's a lot going on, and it's harder knowing you've been shown the door," he said.

Back in his Providence days, Wilson's producer was Sean McAdam, now with the Providence Journal, ESPN.com, and WEEI, among others. ''He was great. We broke a lot of stories," said Wilson. ''And he was good on the air with me, too. The only trouble is that we tended to agree on everything."

Wilson was a pioneer in having quality guests from other media: The Globe's Bob Ryan, football guru Mel Kiper Jr., ESPN's Peter Gammons, and local Providence writers were regulars. ''Even if I only did 10 percent of the talking, I realized the show had listenability," he said.

But times -- and the business -- change. Shouting and noise are in.

Stephen A. Smith, who will be doing a new daily TV show, ''Quite Frankly," for ESPN starting Monday, may well have been speaking for the new sports/entertainment approach by much of the industry during a segment of the network's ''Dream Job." ''It struck me when he said, 'Substance without style doesn't mean a thing,' " said Wilson.

''The degree to which you feel the loss is in direct proportion to how much effort you put into something," said Wilson. ''A starting pitcher feels a loss more than a guy who sat on the bench for the whole game. Everything I do is effort-based and I've invested a lot of myself in the show over 14 years.

''The sad part is that when you leave like this, people think you did something wrong or lost a yard off the fastball, not that you were making too much money for the bottom line," he said.

He hopes his next job comes the way the ESPN one did: ''They found me. That's always the way you get the best jobs. Peter Gammons had recommended me, and they listened to one of my shows live, and it happened to be a particularly good one."

Wilson remains grateful for his ESPN time. ''You always appreciate the chance to be part of a major startup like this."

The feeling is returned by a couple of those cohosts.

''When something had to be handled just the right way, you gave it to Chuck," said Tirico. ''I learned a lot about doing things the right way from him. I'm looking forward to being a guest on his next radio venture. I think the world of him."

Olbermann, who went on to ''SportsCenter," his own show on MSNBC, and now does a weekly hour on ESPN Radio with afternoon host Dan Patrick, said via e-mail, ''Chuck, Tony Bruno, and I launched ESPN [Radio] in 1992. Seven hours a day, Saturday and Sunday. Great guy to work with, fully prepared, has the unique capacity to take it very seriously and then, when you kid him for it, he can laugh along with you."

Wilson asked ESPN not to make the final show a tribute to him.

'' 'Game Night' is all about sports," he said.

What a concept.

No. 1 and climbing

WEEI's ratings (first overall in the market in a tie with WBZ and first in every major male category) continue to go where no sports station has been. ''We're a targeted format," said Jason Wolfe, WEEI's director of programming and operations. ''To win the overall audience is an astonishing achievement. People are listening because it's great radio." Among the male 25-54 demographic, the midday ''Dale and Holley" show and afternoon drive-time ''Big Show" both were No. 1, while ''Dennis & Callahan" was No. 2 in the morning to Howard Stern. Audience shares among that demo were strong all day with the morning show at 10.3, the midday at 12.4, and the ''Big Show" at 14.3. ESPN Radio's arrival barely caused an eyelid to flicker at 850 AM. ''We've got to worry about our own house and ratings," said Wolfe, who is putting many hours in planning the station's annual Jimmy Fund Radiothon, which will be a two-day affair this year, starting with a reception/silent auction Aug. 25 at Game On!, and running on air all day Aug. 26. Last year's event raised close to $1.6 million. ''We set the bar high," Wolfe said of this year's $2 million goal. ''We thought we had a real coup with Lance Armstrong coming to Friday's scheduled [cancer] Survivors Breakfast, but he's going to be in Washington D.C. with the President." For details on tickets and the two days of events, visit www.jimmyfundradiotelethon.org . . . You could tell last night's ''Battle at The Bridges" prime time golf event featuring Tiger Woods was the final of that series: It got relatively little promotion . . . ''Sportsplus" returns tomorrow (NESN, 11:30 p.m.) with the Globe's Dan Shaughnessy and Nick Cafardo joining host Bob Neumeier to talk about the Sox as the trading deadline looms.

Blood count

HBO's ''Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" (tonight, HBO, 10) has a report by Frank Deford on Olympic cycling medalist Tyler Hamilton of Marblehead, currently serving a two-year ban for blood doping. The amount of foreign cells detected in Hamilton's blood was so low that some experts are debating if the tests could be condemning innocent athletes. One said whatever extra cells were present in Hamilton's blood wouldn't have been of any competitive advantage. Yet others claim the few cells were remnants from the womb, either from his mother or a ''vanished twin." . . . Seldom does an athlete make the transition from field to booth as smoothly as former Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman, now Fox's No. 1 game analyst. Fox's pooh-bahs recognized that in two ways recently: 1. By allowing Cris Collinsworth to leave for NBC with a year left on his contract earlier this month, and 2. by extending Aikman's deal for six years, to run through the network's deal with the NFL. Aikman and play-by-play announcer Joe Buck will work their first game as a two-man team calling the Saints-Patriots exhibition game from Foxborough Aug. 18 . . . OLN, coming off its Tour de France coverage, announced it has acquired rights to the 2007 America's Cup, including the challenge series (Louis Vuitton Cup) and the new qualifying regattas . . . Through Friday, OLN's gross ratings for its Tour de France coverage (live in the morning, reairing in the afternoon and in prime time) averaged a 2.1. Saturday's time trial did a 1.3 and Sunday's final stage a 2.5 for the live coverage.