"George Putnam was one-of-a-kind, and that style is long gone!"
Well - I don't know if it's gone, so much as it's moved to right-wing talk radio. That's what Putnam has been doing for the last quarter century, and if he were YOUNG today, he'd probably be another Rush Limbaugh. There are echos of Putnam's personality in Limbaugh's "act," though I don't think Rush takes himself so seriously.
Gene Autry owned KTLA in those days, and was very politically conservative himself, so he essentially gave free reign to Putnam to editorialize as he saw fit. George was very emotional and would frequently go on pompous long-winded tirades, calling his imagined enemies "com-symp pinkos," and so forth. About 1968, he moved over to KTTV for a bigger paycheck, and KTLA countered by hiring ex-Police Chief Tom Reddin (who was awful on air, and didn't last long). The LA Times ran an editorial cartoon showing Putnam and Reddin tugging on each end of the American flag. Reddin thought it was funny, and asked the Times for an autographed and framed reproduction of the cartoon. Predictably, Putnam was angry, and had a tantrum on-air, attacking the publisher of the Times, and equating criticism of him with Communism and flag-burning. Needless to say, George had an enormous ego. I actually taped that editorial (audio). Wish I still had it.
Needless to say, none of this would be permitted on LA television these days - it was a very different time, and Los Angeles was a much more conservative place.
