Big Chuck Schodowski is retiring.
If you're not from Cleveland, "who cares" probably sums up your response. However, Northeast Ohioans take that announcement as bittersweet, since the fatal blow for "Big Chuck and Little John" on Channel 8 kills non-news programming in the region.
The show's skits were memorable, though at times groan-inducing, and they resonated with people because you could run into Big Chuck at an Indians game, or catch his partner, Lil' John, at his Solon jewelry store.
Just as it sported a Millionaire's Row a century ago, Cleveland television had a Golden Age dear to those who lived through it. Most major cities did prior to the fall of syndication's hammer.
Big Chuck started as a writer and actor for a more infamous predecessor. Ghoulardi was almost a prototype for Mystery Science Theatre 3000, in which Ernie Anderson dressed up as macabre character and inserted himself into atrociously bad horror films he hosted on the weekends. I mention the name to my dad, and he instantly lights up, recounting his teenage nights with friends watching "Ghoulardi." Drew Carey wore a Ghoulardi T-shirt on his sitcom.
But with him goes one of the last remnants of local programming. It's a opredictable yet sad statement on the corporate packaging of TV that the little shows, often the ones people foster the closest connections with, are no more.
Aside from the typically boorish local news - and public television, which usually brushes its schedule with local flair - it's been extinguished.
Cleveland just got to enjoy it a little longer.
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