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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
The solution there is to not bother with "streaming services" and just download the readily available alternative captures, which include the original music.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 58.9 ms ] threadMeta: I'm still learning new things about the 70s and 80s.
> 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".
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.
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".
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.
Really a brilliant idea.
Johnny: https://www.awphooey.com/wkrp
Venus: https://www.awphooey.com/venus
Still, very cool, and a little jealous of the on-air staff that get to work there.
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/