KLAC’s fun ‘Loose Cannons’ gets vaporized. Say it ain’t so!

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In the ever-changing, paper-thin world of talk radio, L.A.’s best sports show just vaporized into thin air.

The Loose Cannons -- Steve, Michael and Vic -- are gone, shot OUT of a cannon Wednesday by Fox radio and flagship station KLAC.

This is perfectly in keeping with the nonsensical nature of radio, where nervous execs in suits move most personalities around or discard them entirely as if mouths that move don’t have families and obligations.

But this abrupt end to a show that was fun, funny, ridiculous AND sublime, and very often entertaining, canceled and canned without warning or notice, is a blow to Cannon fans, and they were many, who got their Lakers and local sports fix every weekday at noon.

Steve Hartman -- smart, sassy, the provocateur, played the bossy, obnoxious bad cop on the show. You knew he didn’t believe half of what he was saying but he’d make you mad, anyway. It was a gift, actually.

Mychal Thompson, the ex-Laker -- he was the anomaly, a laid-back Bahamian, but conservative, devout, very GOP in his politics but quite knowledgeable about sports, especially (of course) basketball, plus boxing and tennis.

And Vic (the Brick) Jacobs, the brick rhyming with shtick, an East Coast meshugenah with Far Eastern haikus and a fur hat, a displaced hippie and unabashed home team honk whose relentless support of all things Kobe and Lakers were at once tiring but endearing too.

In the generally lowbrow world of sports radio, theirs was a curious chemistry that worked wonderfully well.

And now in place of the Cannons: Hartman left to soldier on, playing for pay with new partner Chris Myers, doing one of those national-type sports radio snorefests you’ve heard hundreds, if not thousands of times before.

I’m sure there’s a reasonable business explanation for it. The Lakers are leaving KLAC after this season, taking a lot of wind out of the Cannons’ Lakers-driven sails.

Still, the suits can’t be lame enough to think anyone here in L.A. wants to listen to guests such as Ron Wolf, who appeared today. Nothing against Ron or his wife Virginia, but who wants to hear guys like that muck up the airwaves with somnolent national football talk when the Cannons would have done three whole hours today on Kobe’s dislocated finger?

Sorry, Fox, NOT feeling you.

Take it from our new president, change is in the air and now it’s on the air too. But for me, with the Cannons gone, starting tomorrow at high noon, it’s back to my oldie CD’s.

-- Ted Green

Ted Green is a former L.A. Times sportswriter and Senior Sports Producer for KTLA Prime News.

Vic ‘the Brick’ Jacobs, during last season’s playoffs. Credit: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times