Talk:George Putnam (newsman)

Copyvio?

The bulk of this article appears to have been copied and pasted from http://email.newsmax.com/pundits/bios/Putnam-bio.shtml.

I'm going to propose a rollback to the earlier (much stubbier) version.

Megapixie 11:12, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Program name changed from "Talk Back" to self-titled?

The article says:

Putnam currently hosts Talk Back, a conservative talk show.

This page
http://www.newsmax.com/pundits/bios/Putnam-bio.shtml
says

For almost a quarter of a century, George Putnam's daily "Talk Back" program on LA's powerhouse KRLA was ...

The word "was" seems to contrast with what the same link says elsewhere:

George can be heard on simulcast coast-to-coast via Cable Radio Network (CRN) and KCCA, 1050 AM in San Bernardino, CA. and KCAA in Los Angeles.

So it sounds like:
1. He moved from KRLA to KCAA, and
2. The name of the show changed.

The program schedule here
http://www.cableradionetwork.com/
says only "George Putnam" -- it doesn't mention "Talk Back".

Ditto the schedule here:
http://www.kcaaradio.com/
Ac44ck 18:41, 31 July 2007 (UT.

Older than the medium

This statement in the article seemed exaggerated:

"he is one of the very few remaining active radio people ... who is older than the medium itself."

Because of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_radio#Marconi

In 1896, Guglielmo Marconi was awarded a patent for radio

But that wasn't "radio" as we know it -- commercial broadcast of audio. The "mechanism" (wireless transmission of data between two points) is not the "medium".

This page seems to confirm the assertion in the current article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-time_radio

The first radio news program was broadcast on August 31, 1920 on the station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan. This was followed in 1920 with the first commercial radio station in the United States, KDKA

Ac44ck 05:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Ted Baxter

Who believes that he was the inspiration for Ted Baxter? Anyone other than the writer from the program is just speculation and doesn't belong in a biogrphy of a living person, especially since the TV character is a negative stereotype. It is like when the TV anchor on the news says "Some people say" when she really means "I think"StreamingRadioGuide (talk) 19:01, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Ted Knight stated that George was his inspiration for the character...John Putnam, George's nephew. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.100.38.86 (talk) 17:24, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like he and Fishman were a couple of a**holes

I imagine many Ted Baxters were back in those days. Very unprofessional. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.229.187.136 (talk) 16:22, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

When he was on KIEV, which I believe he owned, he would get very cranky on air and chew out his imaginary engineer for not blocking callers who he didn't like. It was very easy to bait him into having a personal pissing match over literally any topic, which he always ended by cutting off the caller and adding some choice words. His only sponsor for a very long time was a sandwich shop named Piero's, which he probably owned.