Trivia / WKRP in Cincinnati

• Acclaimed Flop: The show won a Humanitas Prize^note given to writers who explore the human condition in a nuanced and meaningful manner and racked up many Emmy nominations, but CBS kept moving it around the schedule, preventing it from building up a consistent audience during its initial run.
• Actor-Shared Background: Carol Bruce came to fame performing on Broadway. Mama Carlson mentions that she started out as a stage performer before meeting her husband.
• Alan Smithee: Early in the series, Executive Meddling tried to force Hugh Wilson to take the show in a Denser and Wackier direction, which he didn't really want to do. Still, to appease them, he wrote "Fish Story", but didn't want his name on the episode, so it's credited to Raoul Plager.
• Banned in China: The local CBS affiliate in Cincinnati at first refused to air "In Concert", feeling that it was exploiting the tragedy of the deaths of concertgoers at The Who's 1979 Riverfront Coliseum show. After the station's management saw a preview of the show, they realized that it was more focused on the aftermath of the show and dealt with the subject tastefully, so they allowed to air after all.
• Black Sheep Hit: To a certain extent "Turkeys Away" counts, since it's the show's most famous episode, but it's from the first season (in fact, only the 7th episode of the entire series), and it's a bit of Early-Installment Weirdness, since it's more farcical and less character-based than the rest of the series. It's even been suggested that the Denser and Wackier tone of The New WKRP in Cincinnati came about because, since it's such a beloved episode, the show's creative team decided to use "Turkeys Away" as their role model for the whole series.
• Cast the Expert: Howard Hesseman was a radio DJ for a station in San Francisco before appearing in WKRP. He ad-libbed most of his on-air segments on the show.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Howard Hesseman originally was selected to play Herb Tarlek, but after reading the script he requested to play Johnny Fever instead.
• Colbert Bump:
  • Blondie's "Heart of Glass" wouldn't have become as popular as it did if it hadn't been featured in the season 1 episode "A Commercial Break"
  • "Coward of The County" by Kenny Rogers was used in the episode "A Family Affair". Within 2 weeks of the episode's premiere, the song had gone from #7 on the charts to #3.
  • The Pointer Sisters' song "Could I Be Dreaming" went from #62 on the charts to #52 after the premier of the episode "The Baby".
  • The episode "Out To Lunch" featured "I Have The Skill" by The Sherbs. A few weeks after the premiere, the song went from #84 on the charts to #61.
  • Eric Clapton's "I Can't Stand It" moved up from #22 to #11 on the charts after "A Simple Little Wedding's" broadcast.
  • "Just The Two Of Us" by Bill Withers and Grover Washingon Jr. was played in the episode "Nothing To Fear But..." and subsequently shot up from #27 on the charts to #7.
  • The Go-Go's song "Our Lips Are Sealed" was heard in "Rumors" and went to #26 after being at the #39 spot.
  • After the initial broadcast of the episode "Pills," the Police song "Spirits in the Material World" rose from #54 to #25.
• Creator's Favorite: During season 3 Herb appeared to become a mild case, as there were suddenly many episodes focusing on him. Otherwise, notably averted; pretty much everybody got a healthy dose of character development.
• Dawson Casting: Arnold in "Venus and the Man" is supposed to be 16 years old, but the actor is clearly much older. Handwaved by having his mother say that he's built like "a regular man" despite his youth.
  • Totally inverted by most of the main cast. Gary Sandy, Loni Anderson, Tim Reid and Jan Smithers all looked their age, but Howard Hessman and Richard Sanders, both of whom could have passed for over 50, were 38 during the first season, and Frank Bonner, also looking somewhere in his fifties, was 36. Gordon Jump, who could have passed for 60, was 46.
• The Danza: In the season 2 episode "The Americanation of Ivan", character actor Sam Anderson played a local government agent named....Mr Anderson. Later counts as a You Look Familiar, as he would also play little-seen midmorning DJ Rex Erhardt (or as Johnny calls him, 'Rex Airhead') in season 4's "Rumors".
• Directed by Cast Member: Frank Bonner directed six episodes, while Howard Hesseman and Gordon Jump directed one episode each.
• Dueling Works: It debuted a few months after the release of the comedy film FM, which has a similar setting and characters, but a slightly different premise.^ExplanationThey're both about a rock radio station with a cast of colorful characters, centered on a maverick program director who struggles with his more corporate-minded managers. The station in FM is wildly successful and the DJs are worried about being forced to Sell-Out. WKRP is a failing AM station that starts playing rock out of desperation, and it's the management who feels like they've sold out. While WKRP is sometimes said to be inspired by FM, the pilot was written before the film came out, and Hugh Wilson was concerned that the film might undercut the show's success.
• Edited for Syndication: In reruns and the first DVD release of season 1, most of the popular music was replaced with generic tracks. Fortunately when Shout! Factory re-released the whole series in 2014, they were able to re-clear 90% of the original music.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Mr. Carlson, who drank fairly frequently, was played by devout Mormon Gordon Jump.
• The Other Darrin: Mama Carlson was played by Sylvia Sidney in the pilot. She declined to return and Carol Bruce portrayed Mama Carlson for the remainder of the series, including a re-shot scene from the pilot in a Perspective Flip episode. It was an unusual recasting, since Bruce was almost a decade younger than Sidney, taller than her, and had a different acting style (Sidney had been known for Melodramas in her younger days, while Bruce had been a singer and dancer who did lots of musicals).
• Permanent Placeholder: The scat closing credits song was going to have lyrics, they just hadn't been written yet, but the producers heard the demo version and liked it just like that. Another reason was that they knew the network would have an announcer talking over the music every week, and no one would be able to hear it anyway.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: A persistent rumor once claimed that one (or several) episodes of the show contain dialogue referring to "mayor Springer." While Jerry Springer was indeed mayor of Cincinnati for a brief period in the late '70s, his term ended months before WKRP premiered, and he is never mentioned by name in any episode.
• Referenced by...: An episode with Venus and Johnny drinking on-air in a drunk test inspired The Funday Pawpet Show's Herbie to do the infamous "Drunk Show" in which the puppeteers took a shot of Rumplemintz every half hour of the four hour live netcast (and spent the night sleeping it off in the studio).
• Screwed by the Network: CBS changed the show's time slot a dozen times in four years, leading to its early cancellation. Although the show was getting decent ratings on Monday nights at 9:30 PM following M*A*S*H, CBS moved it out of that slot as they wanted to free it up for House Calls, which starred former M*A*S*H regular Wayne Rogers, and they also felt that the rock n' roll music and the sex appeal of Loni Anderson were better-suited to an earlier slot, which at that time was thought of as mostly aimed at young people. During the third and fourth seasons, CBS continued to move the show around repeatedly, so much so that cast and crew members claimed that even they didn't know when the show aired. This time slot shuffling hurt the show's ratings and it was eventually canceled in 1982. It probably didn't help matters, however, that MTM co-founder and president Grant Tinker had left the company to become chairman and CEO of NBC the year before. Amusingly, despite all the screwing, CBS ended up commissioning another series from MTM, Newhart.
  • Two episodes were planned but never produced because CBS rejected the scripts. "Another Merry Mix-Up" had Herb buying a joint to impress a prospective client, but Carlson, desperately nervous about a meeting with the station's accountant, is tempted to smoke it despite his ultra-square nature and lack of experience with the drug, then finally does, and is shocked by how well it makes him perform in the meeting. But Johnny informs Herb that he was ripped off and given a joint of oregano; Carlson experienced a Fake High. CBS, skittish about the drug content, said no. "Jennifer's Wedding" had Jennifer marry one of her elderly boyfriends. Though the producers never intended it to be permanent, CBS nixed it because they were afraid having Jennifer married would hurt Loni Anderson's sex appeal in some way. Oddly, later episodes that were produced could be considered follow-ups to these unproduced episodes. "Jennifer and the Will" makes more sense if you assume she was married to Col. Buchanan when he died, and the meeting with the accountant in "Another Merry Mix-Up" first introduced the notion that WKRP was only intended to be a tax writeoff for Mama Carlson, which became the main plot point in the series finale.
• Throw It In!: Richard Sanders, who played Les Nessman, was injured prior to shooting the pilot and had to wear a bandage on his face. Sanders decided that this would be the character's trademark, so he's always seen with a bandage on some part of his body in subsequent episodes (later explained that it was due to a large, unseen dog that Les owned).
• Vindicated by Reruns: WKRP did poorly in its original CBS run, but became a huge success once it went to syndication.
• What Could Have Been:
  • David Letterman was Hugh Wilson's first choice to play Andy, but MTM Enterprises instead decided to have him co-star in Mary, a short lived variety show hosted by Mary Tyler Moore. Ironically, Letterman began his career as a local radio host in the Midwest.
  • Likewise, Roddy McDowall was the first choice to play Mr. Carlson.
  • The fifth season would've revolved around WKRP's struggles to stay a top rated station.
• Write What You Know: Hugh Wilson used his experience working in sales at Atlanta radio station WQXI to create the series, with a number of episodes (including "Turkeys Away") based on incidents he witnessed on the job.
• Written by Cast Member: Richard Sanders wrote five episodes, Tim Reid wrote three episodes, and Howard Hesseman wrote one episode.
• You Look Familiar:
  • Sam Anderson appears about once a season, playing a different character each time. In the first season he played Mason Noble, who auditioned to replace Johnny, and in Season 4 he played the oft-mentioned Rex Erhardt, who was so similar to Noble that they were practically the same character, right down to wearing a sweater draped over their shoulders.
  • Michael Des Barres guest stars as Scum of the Earth bandmember Dog in the second episode; come New WKRP Des Barres plays Jack Allen, one half of the morning DJ team Burns and Allen.

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