Ian Punnett March 3, 1960 - December 21, 2023
December 22, 2023
It is with deep sadness that we share the news that Ian Punnett passed away from a brief illness yesterday. His keen intellect and delightful sense of humor will be deeply missed. Since 2000, Ian has, in various incarnations, been a valued host of Coast to Coast AM, including regular weekend hosting duties, his own spin-off show Coast to Coast LIVE with Ian Punnett, a podcast entitled Vaudeville for the Frightened, and most recently twice a month hosting duties.
I’ve had the privilege of producing for Ian these past 24 years, and I will miss our friendship and the professional collaboration. Every conversation behind the scenes was as lively and entertaining and everything we strive for on the air. Ian was great radio personified.
Ian co-hosted rock morning radio shows on WXLP in the Quad Cities on then-rock music station WKDF in Nashville, Tennessee in the early-to-mid-1990s, was also morning man on WMJY in Long Branch, New Jersey. He moved to talk radio at WGN in Chicago in 1994 and then Atlanta, Georgia in 1997 to host a nightly talk show. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, Punnett hosted the morning show (6-10 am) on KTMY-FM. It was known as Ian & Margery, and was co-hosted by his wife, Margery.
While working full-time in radio, Ian completed a Master of Divinity degree from Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta. In 2017, he completed his PhD at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, part of Arizona State University. In 2018 he joined the faculty of the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Kansas State University as a professor of practice and chief operator of the award-winning KSDB-FM. He co-edited and wrote Moving Sounds: A Cultural History of Car Radio (2019) from Peter Lang Publishing and two chapters for Praeger’s Religion and Technology Series: How Religions are Embracing Virtual Media, Social Networks, and Mobile Devices (Vol. II) (2019). He was the author of several books, including How to Pray When You’re Pissed at God from Random House, Toward A Theory of True Crime (2018) from Routledge, and the trade book, A Black Night for the Bluegrass Belle (2017), as well as two children’s books written to raise money for canine charities, Dizzy the Mutt with the Propeller Butt and Jackula the Vampire Dog.
He is survived by his wife, Margery Punnett, and two sons.
--Lisa Lyon
Executive Producer, Coast to Coast AM
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