Running Man, The Easter Egg - Does King Read Orwell?

At the end of Stephen King's dystopian novel The Running Man Ben Richards finds himself on a Network controlled plane. The plane's callsign as repeated several times by the traffic controller is "C-one-niner-eight-four," or C-1984; 1984 being George Orwell's classic dystopian story which shares many plot elements in common with The Running Man.