Nearly 50 Years Later, WKRP in Cincinnati Becomes a Real Radio Station

https://www.openculture.com/2026/05/nearly-50-years-later-wkrp-in-cincinnati-becomes-a-real-radio-station.html

by bookofjoe • 2 months ago

140 83 2 months ago

I 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.

alsobrsp• 2 months ago

I watched it. I am not dead, in a nursing home, nor retired.

bookofjoe2• 2 months ago

Single-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• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months ago

Thanks for the chuckle. But a lot of us are hanging on for dear life, and still living independently.

kmbfjr• 2 months ago

One 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.

bityard• 2 months ago

The last episode of WKRP was 44 years ago. What age do you believe people die or go into a nursing home?

PaulHoule• 2 months ago

Reruns were on for a long time after that. I remember the show fondly even though I was 8 when it ended.

paulryanrogers• 2 months ago

I 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.

toast02• 2 months ago

There 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.

jzb2• 2 months ago

Um. I grew up watching WKRP. I’m in my mid-50s.

vibrio• 2 months ago

I can’t wait until Thanksgiving.

PyWoody2• 2 months ago

As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

justbees3• 2 months ago

like wet sacks of cement...

mauvehaus• 2 months ago

They 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.

SilentM68• 2 months ago

Loved WKRP in Cincinnati. Always looked forward to the hog report. Not only can turkeys fly they bounce, too. A lot of unknowns, at the time, made appearances on that show before becoming famous themselves.

wiremine• 2 months ago

Oh thank you, I came here to make that joke. Great show.

TurdF3rguson• 2 months ago

I was thinking of this episode the other day and wondering how it could have stuck with all of us independently after all these years given that there was no social media / meme sharing back then.

mcculley• 2 months ago

There were plenty of reruns. Not as much content back then as we have now.

JKCalhoun3• 2 months ago

That's funny, especially since the callsign was part of the humor of the show.

mixmastamyk• 2 months ago

Funny, 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.

JKCalhoun3• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months ago

They 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

riddley• 2 months ago

Help me out with KRP's hidden meaning.

LocalH• 2 months ago

The best thing I remember reading related to WKRP in terms of actual radio is when a station in Salt Lake City changed their call to KRPN and used creative wording to attach themselves to WKRP. From Wikipedia:

Other stations have adopted similar branding in reference to the series. In 1986, a Salt Lake City FM station (now KUMT) changed its calls letters to KRPN, and branded itself as WKRP, using the similarity of the spoken letter "N" to the word "in" for a sound-alike station identification: "W KRPN Salt Lake City".

noefingway• 2 months ago

Will Les Nessman be in his "office"?

Loughla2• 2 months ago

We 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.

canucker20162• 2 months ago

from 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• 2 months ago

It'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.

ghaff3• 2 months ago

Northern 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.

justbees3• 2 months ago

There's a DVD box set that has almost all of the original music!

pwg• 2 months ago

The solution there is to not bother with "streaming services" and just download the readily available alternative captures, which include the original music.

gosub1002• 2 months ago

I did this for Married With Children.

gosub1002• 2 months ago

That'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".

WalterBright3• 2 months ago

The most horrible example is the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Early commercial VHS tapes of it have the original music. Later tapes, and the DVDs, have all the music replaced with just awful generic music. That bad music just makes it unwatchable.

Music is an enormous factor in movies, I wonder why nobody mentions it. For example, the Lord of the Rings soundtrack is spectacular and adds greatly to the pleasure in watching it. In contrast, the soundtrack to The Hobbit sounds completely generic and boring, and the result is unwatchable.

Another example is Star Wars. The first two movies had amazingly good soundtracks. The later sequels had boring music, and whaddya know, the sequels were boring.

bombcar2• 2 months ago

I don’t know if perfect soundtracks would save your examples; I’d argue that the malaise infects everything: you can’t make a great soundtrack for a mediocre movie.

jghn• 2 months ago

Beavis & Butthead. The best part was the music videos with their commentary.

wishfish3• 2 months ago

Radio 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

Venus: https://www.awphooey.com/venus

lordfrito• 2 months ago

This is awesome! Thanks it made my day!

wahern• 2 months ago

There 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/retrofit/autumn

Full list at 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• 2 months ago

Huh.

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?

wishfish3• 2 months ago

This 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.

JKCalhoun3• 2 months ago

(Wow, was not expecting "Gardening at Night".)

wishfish3• 2 months ago

For me, it was Captain Beefheart as the big surprise. But this was a very eclectic mix. Not at all what you'd expect from those two characters. Would think Johnny would be 100% traditional rock and Venus would be soul, funk, and maybe a tiny bit of yacht rock to keep things smooth.

Glad the show didn't do this. The writers let these two DJs be the typical 70's DJs who made their own playlists and to hell with the record companies.

Would be interesting to know how much thought the show's writers put into music selection since every song on the playlist was a song noted on the show. It's a nice cross section of American music from mid 60s to early 80s.

tanseydavid• 2 months ago

Shout out to Bailey Quarters. I'm still waiting for your call.

technothrasher2• 2 months ago

I 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.

jzb2• 2 months ago

This 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• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months ago

Man, a bygone era where TV theme songs were an art in itself.

Loughla2• 2 months ago

Other 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• 2 months ago

We also need Station H.A.P.P.Y. Radio

api• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months ago

What did you love about this show?

linsomniac• 2 months ago

It 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• 2 months ago

And when I get confused, I watch TV. Television is never confusing. It's all so simple somehow.

Rediscover• 2 months ago

WKRP'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

A search says WKRP "In Concert" episode is viewable at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qSeWECDb3YM

Edit: s/never/barely/;s/20 minutes or so/part/

Nearly 50 Years Later, WKRP in Cincinnati Becomes a Real Radio Station

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