The Owner's Box, Ep. 21.

Former "Sports Pulse" host Ed Berliner

Many years ago, a guy new to town gave me a break that I hadn't gotten anywhere else within my own media market.

Sure, over the course of some 30 years (at that time) of covering the New England Patriots, I had managed to appear on a few radio shows and even had a brief gig on 50,000-watt giant WBZ before the bosses determined that an Attleboro-based writer, no matter how knowledgeable, was no substitute for a Boston-based writer. As it was, most of my radio gigs came at the behest of out-of-town stations because I knew what I was talking about, I sounded good on the radio and I came cheap.

But in the early part of the 2000s, a fellow by the name of Ed Berliner came to town and put together a nightly sports show for Comcast, which was looking to turn its local-access channels into a regional network. The channel was soon branded as "CN8" and Berliner's nightly show was unlike anything else in the market at the time -- sports highlights and discussion, all delivered at a high-energy pace by the red-headed Berliner, a fast-talk ing New Yorker by birth who somehow tapped into the passion that provincial Bostonians had for their teams.

Ed's show was slick, but not too slick. In fact, one of the things that made his show different and interesting to a lot of people was that he sought out media members as experts who weren't "the usual suspects" -- the same crew of reporters from the Boston papers that made the rounds of every gabbing opportunity out there. As a result, the Boston market and suburbs throughout New England got to see and hear a lot of new faces talking about their favorite teams -- and despite the disadvantage of not having the built-in foundation of a spot on the VHF dial, "Sports Pulse" carved out a following.

I was one of those new faces. I made probably about six or seven appearances on "Sports Pulse" in total, and I got immediate feedback from those that watched it. Most of it was positive. And Ed Berliner was a strong interviewer and he knew how to guide a subject in a way that would make the most of the knowledge he or she had to offer.

The show lasted about four years before Comcast took a different direction with its regional broadcasting plans. But Ed and I have maintained a friendship over the years. He's now a media consultant living in south Florida and he has a successful video podcast called "The Man in the Arena," and I've been a guest a couple of times to lend my perspective, for what it's worth, about the issues of the day -- and yes, including sports.

On Tuesday, I asked Ed if I could perform a little cross-pollination of his show. With his permission, I recorded our conversation (all one hour and 49 minutes of it) and I edited it down to the length of "The Owner's Box" by sticking to sports, or at least what we talked about.

Here's the result. I hope you enjoy it -- and if you want to hear and see more, do a search for Ed Berliner's "The Man in the Arena" on YouTube.