From My Shelves – WKRP Season 1

From My Shelves is a series of occasional posts that look at items from my personal collection to which I have a special attachment.

WKRP in Cincinnati (Season 1) – The classic television series about a struggling radio station in the Queen City.  Because of music rights issues, most of the series was unavailable for home video.  It appears that has changed.

If you ever worked in small-town radio, or at a small radio station in a larger market, my bet is you loved “WKRP”.  My entire career was spent in small market stations and I worked with the equivalent of every character on the show.  Yes, it was all played for laughs, but these kinds of stations are run very much like this one.

You can work your way down through the staff – Johnny, Venus, Les, Bailey, Mr. Carlson, Mother Carlson, Jennifer, Andy, and Herb.  I’ve worked with them all in some form.  I’ve sat through the meetings where bad promotions were developed, and where the airstaff had every intention of ignoring whatever management told them to do.  News stories with badly mispronounced names.  I could go on and on.

All of which is to say, this is why this is one of the most popular TV shows among radio pros of a certain age.

But most of the world aren’t members of that clan.  And the show is still hysterically funny.  It’s the “little engine that could” story.  Despite all their shortcomings, the people at WKRP are trying to do something special.  And succeeding more often than not.

Several of the greatest episodes are in this collection.  “Hoodlum Rock” featuring rocker Michael Des Barres as the leader of the fabulous group “Scum of the Earth”.  “The Hold Up” where Johnny is on a live broadcast from a store when it’s robbed, on air. “Turkeys Away” is one of the iconic episodes from the series, featuring a horrific Thanksgiving promotional stunt.  “Tornado” where we discover that a weather disaster is not all that different from a Communist invasion.

Sadly, it’s missing some of the best episodes in the series. “Bah Humbug”(the KRP take on “A Christmas Carol”), “Put Up or Shut Up” where Jennifer finally calls Herb’s bluff and “Venus and the Man” where Venus reveals his roots as a teacher who does an astounding job of teaching basic atomic structure in the terms of neighborhood gangs.  One other episode that I would love to see again was quite controversial at the time.  “In Concert” deals with a major rock concert sponsored in part by the radio station.  Because of the festival seating used, 11 people died and the station is struggling to deal with their sense of responsibility.  It was based on an actual event, a 1979 concert by the Who in Cinncinati.  It is a stunning piece given the often lightweight situation comedy of the series.

It’s a very special series that ran for only 4 years.  And I love it still.