Talk America Founder Tom Star Dies

[radiotony]

Talk America had offices in Canton, and I believe one other South Shore town 
before moving to Las Vegas.
I talked to him once about doing a satellite show - I believe it was in 1994 
or 1995 and it seemed like he ran a legit operation.
But at $200 an hour for air time and no sponsors, it wasn't going to happen 
for me.
However, later, I heard from some others who weren't happy that Star had 
played up the network as being on bigger stations than he actually was on.
He also counted all the stations that all his leassors were on ... so, if 
Doug Stephan or Chuck Harder had shows on a station but that station didn't 
carry
any other Talk America programming, he would count them as a Talk America 
affiliate, that kind of thing. Talk America did get a big business spread
in the Boston Globe just before moving to Vegas and they eventually did 
manage to get enough money to lease or use a second satellite -
which then put all the folks who were paying him $300 an hour for air time 
in competition with themselves. It was a pretty strange operation.
I don't know if they are still in operation now or not.

Best,
Tony

Tony Schinella
News Director/A&E
WKXL 1450
Celebrating Concord & the Capital Region
with thoughtful community radio
Concord, NH
http://www.wkxl1450.com
http://politizine.blogspot.com
----- Original Message ----- 
From: SteveOrdinetz
To: boston-radio-interest@rolinin.BostonRadio.org
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 7:36 AM
Subject: Re: Talk America Founder Tom Star Dies


At 02:08 AM 4/27/2005, Joseph Pappalardo wrote:

>http://www.radioandrecords.com/Newsroom/2005_04_25/talkamerica.asp
>
>Wasn't Tom Star based in Boston for a time?

Name sounds familiar.  Didn't he do a weeknight sports show in the late 80s
called the Sports Final?