Pair of longtime Edmonton sports media fixtures dead

Art of longtime Edmonton sports broadcaster John Short on a southside mural honoring local sportscasters on Jan. 11, 2024. (CTV News Edmonton)

Two well-known Edmonton sports media personalities died Thursday, each a familiar voice — on the air and in print — to different generations of the city's rabid sports fans.

The media roots of both John Short, 86, and Robin Brownlee, 65, started in newspapers — Toronto native Short working in print before writing for The Canadian Press wire service in Edmonton in the 1960s and 1970s, and Brownlee getting his start in the mid-1980s, writing sports for the Kamloops Daily News.

After a stint as the Edmonton Oilers’ public-relations director, Short began a 10-year on-air run in 1982 with Sportstalk, a late-night call-in show on then-Oilers radio rights holder station CFRN 1260, its start coinciding with the meteoric NHL rise of a Wayne-Gretzky led team.

The nightly show, which leaned heavily on taking calls from listeners, became a fixture on Edmonton radio, with many an Oilers fan young and old staying up late following games to hear callers' many rants and raves.

A TV version of Sportstalk found its way onto CFRN's channels 2 and 3 for a short time as well.

"He was salt of the earth," Rod Phillips, Oilers play-by-play announcer during Short's years on sports radio, told CTV News Edmonton.

"I don't think he had one enemy in his world. He was a nice guy. That really showed on his talk show — it just kind of oozed out. He could find criticism in some things, but he could do it in a nice way."

Phillips said Short developed deep connections to the Edmonton sports community "because he was a very good reporter."

"That came out in his show, his reporting abilities," Phillips said. "There were times when he'd be critical of one of the pro teams in Edmonton, but he had a neat way of doing it without making it outlandish or cruel or mean. That was really a neat skill and something I always admired about him."

Short moved to CFCW in 1992 after the country station acquired the Oilers rights, eventually landing at CJCA until that station fired its sports staff in 2004, then returned to 1260 for a 21st Century version of his heralded '80s call-in show.

Short, who was inducted into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame in 1988 and whose photo adorns the Oilers media wall of fame at press-box level in Rogers Place, made room in his schedule for writing, too.

In 1984, following the departure of lead sports newspaper columnist Terry Jones to the rival Edmonton Sun, Short assumed sports opinion duties at the Edmonton Journal, for whom he wrote until 2005 before he, too, scribbled for the tabloid-style Sun until 2018.

Brownlee arrived in Edmonton in 1989 to work for the Journal, sharing Oilers coverage duties alongside the likes of Mark Spector, Jim Matheson and Cam Cole.

In 2000, he moved to the rival Sun, joining Jones and Rob Tychkowski to cover the Oilers, until 2007.

After stints with The Canadian Press and NHL.com, Brownlee became a regular fixture on Edmonton sports radio, often appearing on and co-hosting Jason Gregor's shows on TSN 1260 and more recently on Sports 1440, and continued to write about the Oilers at OilersNation.com.

Gregor, who got his start in radio as a producer for Short's show (and remembers him as well), said in a blog post on OilersNation that Brownlee could be gruff but was "incredibly loving and gentle."

"Most of our memorable conversations were about family, not sports. He had some great sports stories, but what really made him excited and happy was talking about his family," Gregor wrote.

"Robin used to be driven to chase down a lead or break a story, and he was very good at it, but becoming a father later in life ... changed his priorities."