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Nearly 50 Years Later, WKRP in Cincinnati Becomes a Real Radio Station
- comrade1234 6mo agoI think I'm getting this show mixed up with another. I thought that Phil Hartman was in it but looking at the wiki page he's not listed... ah, Phil Hartman was in News Radio. WKRP was almost 20 years earlier. Everyone that watched it is probably dead or in a nursing home.
- kmbfjr 6mo agoOne of the actors of the show recorded promos for the station, so guess not. The fact that someone posted a link to the article that you probably didn’t read also refutes this premise.
- alsobrsp 6mo agoI watched it. I am not dead, in a nursing home, nor retired.
- bookofjoe 6mo agoSingle-question aptitude test: choose one a. dead b. in a nursing home c. retired d. one of the above e. none of the above
- skeeter2020 6mo agoI watched and (apprently!) still know the entire theme song, which is wild because they stopped making new episodes when I was a toddler. Must have been in reruns; I wonder if it was that after school / pre-dinner time slice when we watched Happy Days and 321 Contact?
- quantummagic 6mo agoThanks for the chuckle. But a lot of us are hanging on for dear life, and still living independently.
- bityard 6mo agoThe last episode of WKRP was 44 years ago. What age do you believe people die or go into a nursing home?
- PaulHoule 6mo agoReruns were on for a long time after that. I remember the show fondly even though I was 8 when it ended.
- paulryanrogers 6mo agoI saw it in passing as a kid. It was clearly for adults, so by now, yes most are either in nursing homes or at least senior living communities.
- technothrasher 6mo agoI was a pre-teen when it came out and I loved it. We all used to watch it as a family.
- toast0 6mo agoThere was also two seasons of 'the new wkrp' from ten years after the old one. I don't follow the show (either version), so I don't know if the new seasons are any good; or the old ones really, but there'a a following, obviously.
- jzb 6mo agoUm. I grew up watching WKRP. I’m in my mid-50s.
- vibrio 6mo agoI can’t wait until Thanksgiving.
- PyWoody 6mo agoAs God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.
- justbees 6mo agolike wet sacks of cement...
- asah 6mo agoI always wondered if there was a relationship between this and the Oregon exploding whale in 1970 ? https://www.google.com/search?q=whale+explosion+oregon https://www.google.com/search?q=whale+explosion+oregon
- justbees 6mo agoEvidently it's from a true story. Luckily not actually thrown from a helicopter! https://classictvhistory.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/turkeys-away-an-oral-history/ https://classictvhistory.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/turkeys-aw... CLARKE BROWN: The turkey drop was actually a real incident. ... Although the turkeys were thrown off the back of a truck, as opposed to how it was depicted on the [show].
- mauvehaus 6mo agoThey can, but they don't gain altitude so good. I had one fly across the road at top-of-windshield level. Since I figured it would just clear or just glance off, I did nothing to avoid it. Unfortunately, I had a roof rack on. Fortunately, I was able to find replacement parts for the rack on eBay. The turkey didn't appear to be harmed. After tumbling ass over teakettle to the ground, it walked into the field on the side of the road looking for all the world like a cat that wanted you to forget you'd just seen it do something beneath its dignity.
- JKCalhoun 6mo agoThat's funny, especially since the callsign was part of the humor of the show.
- mixmastamyk 6mo agoFunny, I didn't watch this show much but was well aware of it as a kid, maybe it went over my head. And like many things introduced as a kid, I never thought to consider what KRP was supposed to mean. But I did just now, cheers. Meta: I'm still learning new things about the 70s and 80s.
- JKCalhoun 6mo agoI think it went over a lot our heads at the time… The conceit of the show (pilot episode) was that the station had been a staid and lame radio station (out of Cincinnati) that suddenly came under new ownership (I think?). The staff now get to build a new (and cooler) brand for the station and there are no longer any guardrails.
- jancsika 6mo agoThey even had a parody of a reality show in "Real Families." This was in 1980. There's a scene where Herb is talking his family up as he attempts to casually throw a football with his kid. It quickly becomes obvious Herb has never played with his son, who makes no attempt to catch the ball and just keeps getting hit with it. Ooh, it's even better than I remembered-- Herb steals his son's stuffed animal from him to get him to play catch: https://youtu.be/1Tk6NpIncXg?t=444 https://youtu.be/1Tk6NpIncXg?t=444
- riddley 6mo agoHelp me out with KRP's hidden meaning.
- slater 6mo ago"crap" ...?
- LocalH 6mo ago
- noefingway 6mo agoWill Les Nessman be in his "office"?
- Loughla 6mo agoWe had a shared office at one point with three of us with desks. One guy was absolutely ANAL about nobody touching his stuff or approaching him unannounced. So we taped off the area around his desk and started calling him Les. He was like 22 and had no idea what that was about, but he liked the nickname. It's decades later and he still goes by Les. Love it.
- canucker2016 6mo agofrom https://www.cincinnati.com/story/tvandmediablog/2014/06/06/wkrp-in-cincinnati-howard-hesseman-loni-anderson-tim-reid-shout-factory-vietnam-war/10019209/ https://www.cincinnati.com/story/tvandmediablog/2014/06/06/w... [Hugh] Wilson recalled that Dr. Johnny Fever "would always say, 'More music and less Nessman.' And he (Les) never got it."
- criddell 6mo agoIt's a bummer that the show will never play with original music on some streaming service due to (as I understand it) music licensing problems.
- ghaff 6mo agoNorthern Exposure had similar problems but, as I understand it, at least some was resolved for the (somewhat relatively) recent DVD box set release. It just wasn't an issue that was seriously considered by a lot of studios(?) at the time and it's not like back catalog TV shows are usually these big money-makers that warrant a lot of time and cost to get in order.
- justbees 6mo agoThere's a DVD box set that has almost all of the original music!
- pwg 6mo agoThe solution there is to not bother with "streaming services" and just download the readily available alternative captures, which include the original music.
- gosub100 6mo agoI did this for Married With Children.
- freedomben 6mo agoSame for super natural season 1. The original music was badass, the replacement really changed the show
- gosub100 6mo agoThat's so stupid when these rights disputes come up! Think of how many people will stream or buy the songs legally after (re) discovering them on an old show. And think of how few people will watch the show solely because it features copyright music. It should be the other way around, i.e. Stranger Things should send the record company a bill for the resurgence of "Running up that hill".
- wishfish 6mo agoRadio Retrofit took all the station breaks and song announcements from the show, combined them with the full length songs to create around 6 hours of WKRP radio. 3 hours of Johnny Fever and 3 hours of Venus Flytrap. MP3 downloads available. Really a brilliant idea. Johnny: https://www.awphooey.com/wkrp https://www.awphooey.com/wkrp Venus: https://www.awphooey.com/venus https://www.awphooey.com/venus
- lordfrito 6mo agoThis is awesome! Thanks it made my day!
- wahern 6mo agoThere are more shows, too, including two 3 hour shows with Chris on KBHR Cicely (i.e. Northern Exposure): https://www.awphooey.com/kbhr https://www.awphooey.com/kbhr https://www.awphooey.com/retrofit/autumn https://www.awphooey.com/retrofit/autumn Full list at https://www.awphooey.com/retrofit https://www.awphooey.com/retrofit (I only know this from your post, so thank you. Just mentioning in case KBHR piques someone's interest more than WKRP. I loved both TV shows.)
- b112 6mo agoHuh. I heard that they didn't license the original music for DVD, etc when the show ran, only for reruns, so that the DVDs and so on only have snippets of replacement music. I wonder, is this replacement music, or the original tracks?
- wishfish 6mo agoThis isn't replacement music. What this project does is take parts of the show where Johnny or Venus announces the song they're about to play and then mixes in the full length song. Project mixes in other things like the DJ patter. Station breaks. Weather reports. Les reading the news. All mixed together so it sounds like six hours someone recorded off a real radio station in the late 70s / early 80s.
- JKCalhoun 6mo ago(Wow, was not expecting "Gardening at Night".)
- tanseydavid 6mo agoShout out to Bailey Quarters. I'm still waiting for your call.
- technothrasher 6mo agoI was always going to name my daughter Bailey after Bailey Quarters. But I never had a daughter, and my wife wouldn't let me name our son that. So the dog got the name.
- jzb 6mo agoThis is wonderful. I grew up watching WKRP and wanted to be Doctor Johnny Fever when I grew up. Managed to work in radio for a few years part-time, but by then DJing was “here’s a program sheet. Play these songs, exactly” - not the dream of being a DJ doing their own programming. I also realized why Johnny was always broke. Still, very cool, and a little jealous of the on-air staff that get to work there.
- amanaplanacanal 6mo agoI am so happy that my local town has a non profit radio station where the DJs pick their own music. You never know what you are going to hear when you turn it on.
- snapetom 6mo agoMan, a bygone era where TV theme songs were an art in itself.
- Loughla 6mo agoOther than game of thrones, I can't hear any relatively new show themes in my head. But shows like newhart, wkrp, mash and the like I still know.
- socalgal2 6mo agoWe also need Station H.A.P.P.Y. Radio
- api 6mo agoI live in Cincinnati and thought at first glance maybe somebody set up some kind of weird indie radio station and somehow got those call letters, which would be epic. Sad.
- esafak 6mo agoWhat did you love about this show?
- linsomniac 6mo agoIt wasn't JUST the music, but the music was an incredible part of the show which has made the re-issues that replaced the music with other selections (because of the licensing) just not hit right.
- embit 6mo agoAnd when I get confused, I watch TV. Television is never confusing. It's all so simple somehow.
- Rediscover 6mo agoWKRP's handling of the Who concert at Riverfront Coliseum (Cincinnati, 1979) really sticks out in my memory. The radio station was portrayed as promoting a big concert through most of that episode, barely mentioning The Who by name that I recall, and it seemed like a "normal" installment for the first part of the television programme. The latter minutes somberly dealt with the tragedy and tried to bring attention to problems with "festival" (general admission) seating for such venues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who_concert_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who_concert_disaster A search says WKRP "In Concert" episode is viewable at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qSeWECDb3YM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qSeWECDb3YM Edit: s/never/barely/;s/20 minutes or so/part/