WEST VALLEY CITY — Wednesday night's hockey game in the E Center will be extra tough for Ian Furness. After more than four years on the job, the radio voice of the Utah Grizzlies is calling his final game.
He's leaving the organization to become director of sports programming for a new venture at a Salt Lake radio station.
"I've been struggling with this for almost two weeks," said Furness. "It was a real difficult decision to make."
Though he'll return for nine television broadcasts later in the season, Furness is leaving the Grizzlies to head up the sports department at revamped 1280 AM, which will soon change its call letters from KDYL to KZN, The Zone.
Beginning Monday, the station will assume a news and sports format. Longtime radio personality Dan Bammes will anchor a news show from 6-9 a.m., while Furness hosts sports talk programming weekdays from 2-5 p.m. He'll be joined in the final hour by fellow KFNZ departees Craig Bolerjack and Gordon Monson, who'll continue talking sports until 7 p.m.
"K-Fan and the Grizzlies have been great to me," said Furness. "I have nothing but respect for both and great memories with both."
Furness, who has also served a director of media relations since joining the Grizz in 1997, said the decision to pursue what he hopes will be a better opportunity wasn't easy. The Grizz, he added, are like family.
Said team president Tim Mouser: "Obviously we'll miss Ian. It's good to see he'll still be in the same market. It's a good opportunity for him. And at the end of the day, he'll be home with his family."
Furness, who has a 5-year-old daughter and another child on the way, acknowledges less travel is a positive. Even so, after broadcasting hockey for more than a decade — covering the Western Hockey League's Seattle Thunderbirds and Tri-Cities Americans for three years each prior to coming to Utah — Furness said it'll be tough to sign off.
Mouser said the Grizz radio duties will be taken over — at least in November and December — by KFNZ's Randolph Fairbairn. His first broadcast will be Sunday at Manitoba.
E-MAIL: dirk@desnews.com