I remember Putnam at KTTV and KCOP, but not at KTLA, though I'll happily admit I'm wrong.
L.A.'s independent stations were a mixed bag, at best. KTTV probably had the best film library, but also had Ben Hunter (he who inspired Carson's Tea-Time Movie*) constantly selling you-finish A-frame homes. KHJ took occasional risks (I remember one week they devoted to 50s programming, complete with commercials, playing it straight-faced), and had the Million Dollar Movie and Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan, and monster movies on the weekend. KCOP was hopeless, with seemingly no budgets for anything and the worst house-made local commercials. KTLA was somewhere in the middle, with reruns, a good film library (mainly Goldwyn and what movies Paramount hadn't sold to Universal), Tom Hatten, and great news broadcast (I thought Hal Fishman and Stan Chambers were immortal), all subject to the whims of Gene Autry. (*Watching "Whew!" on Buzzr last week, they're finally up to the "celebrity" episodes and Carol Wayne was one of the guests. I was kind of surprised to see she really was that dim.) --Dave Sikula On Friday, February 25, 2022 at 5:59:40 PM UTC-8 PGage wrote: > The article skips from 1964 to 1979, which is most of the interval of my > experience with KTLA (I left LA in 1987, and my memory begins around 1967). > For me they were the home of Dick Enberg and the Angels, and old movies to > watch occasionally when the three prime time networks failed. > > But I can’t believe any history of KTLA, no matter how cursory, can skip > over George Putnam (Ted Baxter). I know he worked at most of the LA > independent stations, but for most of my childhood he was Channel 5. We > watched a lot of local news in my house, and LA had some pretty high > profile anchors in those days. We would never watch Putnam for news, but my > mother liked to hate-watch (she never knew that phrase but would have loved > it) him for 5-10 minutes a couples of days a week, and we always thought he > was a joke. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/cf8ea36f-3ed9-4147-8765-b81716550d39n%40googlegroups.com.
