and to meet regulatory approval, Lake Erie divested WJW to Booth American for $2.1 million. Not included in the sale was WJW's talk format, which Lake Erie opted to "move" outright to WWWE. Nearly all of WJW's air talent and management were reassigned to WWWE, with Pete Franklin's Sportsline as the lone program retained. While neither WJW or WWWE had strong ratings, WJW's talk format had been drawing more younger listeners than competitor WERE, while WWWE was now one of the lowest-rated stations outside of sports programming. Dismissed with the move were Ray Marshall, David "Fig" Newton, Jack Reynolds and morning sportscaster Bruce Drennan along with eight other staffers. Franklin repeatedly threatened to leave WWWE during the latter days of Gannett ownership, and Drennan was seen in some circles as a potential replacement to host Sportsline. WJW general manager Art Caruso and news director John O'Day assumed like duties at WWWE, and were tasked with hiring Jim Muller's broadcast partner for the Browns broadcasts which were also transferred to WWWE. Along with the Indians and Cavs rights, Lake Erie's takeover of WWWE resulted in the station now holding the broadcast rights to all three professional sports teams for the first time. Newspaper reports recognized the transactions and format changes as "WWWE... became, in (essence), WJW", or that WJW had "a new location on the radio dial". The final week of programming over WJW had promos for both the talk format's "new home" on WWWE and Booth American's replacement format on WJW, rechristened as WRMR. Indeed, the switchover at 11:00 a.m. on June 11, 1985, had a "final sign-off" for WJW followed by Cleveland mayor George Voinovich pressing a ceremonial switch on WWWE that completed the "move" of WJW's prior talk format. Along with Franklin, the "new" WWWE's lineup boasted an all-news block in morning drive, followed by hosts John McCullough, Michael Freedman, Merle Pollis and Joel Rose, with NBC Talknet in the overnight hours. The summer 1985 Arbitron book showed substantial ratings increases for WWWE after the switch to talk, surprising even the station's management and resulting in one paper calling their fifth-place showing "almost a Modell Miracle." Ratings for WWWE remained higher than with the MOR format, but slowly stagnated against WERE despite a substantial promotional campaign centered around Pollis, Rose and Franklin. Larry Elder, who was involved with local television productions in Cleveland, was inspired to enter talk