Q & A with GEORGE PUTNAM : ‘I Broadcast in My Spare Time’

With little fanfare, George Putnam celebrated his 60th anniversary in broadcasting last week.

At 80 years of age, Putnam still has the distinctive, stentorian vocal style familiar to millions of television viewers in the 1950s and ‘60s, when he was Los Angeles’ highest-paid television newsman. His mixture of news reports and editorials earned him a reputation as a staunchly conservative commentator.

Putnam got his start in broadcasting--and washing floors--in 1934 at WDGY, a Minneapolis radio station. During the next six decades he worked for NBC, ABC, Mutual Broadcasting, KTLA-TV Channel 5, KTTV-TV Channel 11 and, for the last 20 years, at KIEV-AM (870) in Glendale, where he hosts a talk show called “Talkback” weekdays from noon to 2 p.m.

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Question: You were conservative long before it was fashionable, as it has become these days on talk radio. What do you think when you see the success of someone like Rush Limbaugh? Do you think you were ahead of your time?

Answer: I think that Rush Limbaugh is a phenomenon. And yet not really a phenomenon, because many of the things he’s doing today, I did 40 years ago in this very community. However, I take exception to two or three things he does. With all of that wonderful opportunity, with all those stations he broadcasts on, why in hell does he insist on talking about himself? I’m so g-------- fed up with the fact that he is self-indulgent and self-aggrandizing. Shut up already and let people make their decision. Don’t tell people how wonderful you are. And the other thing is when he says that animals have no rights. Then he plays “Born Free” with machine guns and animals screaming. . . . I am an animal person. People come first and then our animals. God, I spend 90% of my time working with, helping, saving animals. It’s an obsession.

Q: You are often called ultra-conservative or even reactionary. What’s your response to this label?

A: I’ve never thought of myself as a conservative. I detest labels. I’ve been called many things in my career: right-wing extremist, super-patriot, goose-stepping nationalist, jingoistic SOB. And those are some of the nice things! But those people have never bothered to determine my background: Farmer Labor Party, Socialist Party, lifelong member of the NAACP, member of the Urban League. . . . I went through the Depression, and my father was reduced from a sales manager of a company to selling peanuts door-to-door. Then, because of that, I fell in love with Franklin D. Roosevelt. I’ve been a lifelong Democrat. I’m a conservative Democrat.

Q: In the ‘60s you were said to be the highest-paid television news reporter in Los Angeles, with a salary of $300,000 a year. What do you think of the salaries being paid to television anchors today?

A: I’ll be quite frank with you. No one--and I don’t give a damn who you are--no news reader is worth $1 million on a local station. Now, that may be a horribly harsh statement and, well, maybe it’s not fair, but I mean it. Especially news readers. All my life I’ve reported and written. I wrote “One Reporter’s Opinion” every day of my radio and television life. It’s the best training in the world. I am not too impressed with people who cannot report and write. . . . I would like to ask the average broadcaster today after he or she is finished broadcasting to repeat for me what he or she just said. Now, there would be a test! And I’ll wager there isn’t one in 10 who has absorbed the material because they didn’t write it, prepare it or report it.

Q: What do you think of television news shows these days?

A: I don’t very often watch them. Good reporting has all but disappeared from television news. One thing that aggravates me more than anything else are these g-------- teasers: “Famous actor dies. We’ll tell you who at 11.”

Q: How has broadcasting changed over the past 60 years?

A: We have the greatest technology in the history of the world. But I frankly don’t think our present-day reporting has kept up with the technology. With present-day technology, an independent or local station is as effective as any network in the history of mankind. . . . But, as far as the reporting’s concerned, I’m very disturbed by two or three things: tabloid journalism--the fact that hard news is suffering, that I tune in a news report in the evening and get as much as eight or 10 minutes of shootings and stabbings and robberies and murders and rapes. All of that titillation and much of it trivial. Scandal, a numbness, a kind of a loss of feeling about what blood truly is, about what life truly is, what the human truly is, all lost in kind of a world of make-believe that crosses over into actuality.

And then further than that, I worry about checkbook journalism. I fear it’s going to get in the way of court cases. And it’s all a part now of the jury system. The whole damn jury system is falling apart.

Q: How did you get your start in broadcasting?

A: I started out at WDGY Radio in Minneapolis. It was a 1,000-watt station owned by Dr. George Young. In those days, all the screwballs got into radio because they didn’t think it was going to last. He was a mail-order optometrist. I answered the telephone; I spun the records. It was the best training in the world. But then along came television in 1934. . . .

I got started in television in 1939. I did both over the years. Walter Winchell made my career. The thing that gave me attention was he called me “the greatest voice in American radio.” I went from $190 a month at NBC to better than $200,000 a year, which was much too much for a 24-year-old kid out of Minnesota.

Q: You were said to be one of the inspirations for the Ted Baxter character on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Is that true?

A: It was kind of a composite of three of us, I think: Baxter Ward, Jerry Dunphy and myself. Early on it offended both Jerry and myself. Because when you’re much younger, you take yourself more seriously. Then you outgrow it and you don’t give a damn. It was a hell of a cute character. And I’ve known a few (anchors) like that. Airheads.

Q: What about the future? Now that you’re 80, do you have any plans to retire?

A: I wouldn’t know what else to do except for my ranching and my horses. I’ve raised 450 thoroughbred horses. I’ve won 150 races. Ran seventh in the Kentucky Derby once.

Q: What do you do when you’re not broadcasting your talk show? How do you spend your leisure time?

A: I work on my ranch (in Chino) from 5 in the morning till 8 at night every Saturday and Sunday. I have 20 dogs, 30 cats, three burros, two Palominos, 65 thoroughbred horses. I never stop. I have 20 acres. I broadcast in my spare time.