40 Years In the past: CBS Yanks the Plug on ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’

By the point the final episode of WKRP in Cincinnati aired on April 21, 1982, the community had pulled the plug, a destiny the traditional sitcom’s titular radio station had managed to keep away from for 4, perennially beleaguered seasons.

Ending on a cliffhanger that serves extra to revive the sequence’ established order, the episode, entitled “Up and Down the Dial,” sees stalwart burnout DJ Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) outmaneuvering the AM station’s imperious proprietor Mrs. Carlson’s plan to change from rock ‘n’ roll to an all-news format, threatening to blackmail her with the information that she’d by no means supposed for her milquetoast station proprietor grownup son, Arthur, to be a hit. Holding the truth that all her speak about Arthur (Gordon Bounce) making one thing of himself within the radio world was a mere smoke display for WKRP’s supposed place as a money-losing tax dodge, Fever yanks the rug out from underneath the sequence’ main antagonist, and appears ready to make sure that he and his KRP colleagues can carry on rocking the Queen Metropolis.

It’s a nifty twist to an episode that begins with programming director Andy Travis (Gary Sandy) pulling a switcheroo by gathering all people in his workplace for an ominous-sounding assembly, earlier than revealing the newest scores have the once-lowly WKRP in an astounding (for them) sixth place. (Johnny’s primary within the station’s key demo, resulting in him excitedly telling Loni Anderson’s unflappable receptionist Jennifer, “Look what I’m doing with teenage boys!”) Since WKRP can by no means delight in its uncommon victories for lengthy, nevertheless, a dour customer proclaims himself to Andy as WKRP’s new information director, with everybody on the station being provided meager jobs within the new, all-news hierarchy. Tim Reid’s clean and complex nighttime DJ Venus Flytrap is pegged because the site visitors man, a lot to his horror.

Taking its title from the theme music’s lonely lament in regards to the nomadic lifetime of a radio professional in a world of unstable gigs and frequent format shuffles, “Up and Down the Dial” nonetheless hints that Andy, Johnny, Venus and the remainder of the WKRP gang have discovered a roughly everlasting house. Certainly, when the episode was filmed, creator Hugh Wilson and his staff had been assured that their present had discovered a house, too. At the least for one more season.

With plans to shift the sitcom’s focus from the difficulties of operating a perennially downtrodden, bottom-dwelling radio station to the equal or higher challenges of operating a profitable and worthwhile one, Wilson and firm had been geared as much as take WKRP (and WKRP in Cincinnati) into the ’80s and past.

As a substitute, CBS turned off the juice. It will be surprising if the community hadn’t spent WKRP’s total run undermining what turned out to be a way more subtle and higher present than the wacky office sitcom CBS initially imagined. The primary eight episodes’ scores had been unhealthy sufficient for the present to get pulled for the dreaded “retooling,” however, when Wilson introduced the present again from compelled hiatus, little or no had modified, other than the inside of the station expanded to facilitate the workers’s shortly jelling chemistry, and Wilson’s dedication to broaden each the sequence’ comedian and surprisingly dramatic palette.

Along with the sequence’ preliminary broader comedian moments (the all-time traditional “Turkeys Away” got here proper earlier than the hiatus), WKRP felt free to include real-life points going through the radio and music trade (payola, right-wing censorship, ratings-driven programming consultants), heavier matters (home violence, alcoholism, suicide and even transgenderism) and occurrences just like the very real-world tragedy that passed off in Cincinnati in the course of the present’s run, when unregulated “competition seating” noticed a stampede at a 1979 Who live performance, ensuing within the deaths of 11 concertgoers.

Watch a Scene From the Last Season of ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’

Alongside the best way, WKRP discovered room for all the things from a Christmas Carol episode (the place the Massive Man finds out what the station could be like with out him, after unintentionally downing certainly one of Johnny’s brownies) to a two-part The Sting-like heist image (the place the workers works collectively to accumulate the key altering room photographs of Jennifer taken by a sleazy photographer throughout a promo shoot) to a prescient and stylistically daring parody of actuality TV and mockumentaries the place obnoxious advert man Herb Tarlek (Frank Bonner) is confronted together with his household and office’s emotions about him when a TV documentary crew chooses the Tarleks as a topic.

Initially deliberate as one thing of a star automobile for Sandy because the amiably levelheaded Santa Fe programmer Andy Travis (his title taken from an actual radio-exec good friend of former radio professional Wilson), WKRP quickly took benefit of its uniformly stellar ensemble. Hesseman’s Dr. Johnny Fever is the quintessential DJ lifer, with all the numerous and sketchy comedian backstory that entails. Reid’s Venus is initially one thing of a stereotype, with the actor and the writers step by step filling in a backstory for why the flashy night time man has adopted his persona. Reid turns in a tour de power efficiency within the late Season One episode “Who Is Gordon Sims?,” which reveals not simply the DJ’s actual title, but additionally why he’s so invested in maintaining his id obscured. (Reid additionally reteamed with Wilson for 1987’s Frank’s Place, one other ahead-of-its-time sitcom that equally didn’t win community assist.)

Anderson’s preternaturally competent Jennifer Marlowe turns the “dumb blonde secretary” cliche inside out, to magnificent comedian impact. (Anderson by no means had nearly as good a job.) In the meantime, Jan Smithers stays the prototypically formidable ’70s liberated girl, ceaselessly (and, for TV on the time, uniquely) stumping for progressive causes just like the Equal Rights Modification, whereas proving greater than a match for the bombshell Jennifer in attracting male characters’ (and viewers’) admiration. Her never-consummated flirtation with Johnny gives certainly one of tv’s all-time biggest well-earned chuckle traces. When Johnny’s on-air stunt prices him his broadcasting confidence, his response to the station’s multitasking Bailey telling him to talk as if solely to her sees Johnny bashfully saying, “Good day and good afternoon, Cincinnati. I positive wish to take you house and kiss you throughout at the hours of darkness.”

Richard Sanders’ flip because the station’s conservative and incompetent newshound Les Nessman and Bonner’s because the boorishly ubiquitous would-be workplace Romeo (and, as we’d now time period him, sexual harasser) each handle to search out unlikely humanity in a few all-time comedian foils. And Bounce’s Arthur Carlson by no means comes round to benefit from the raucous course of his station underneath Andy however learns to understand the folks underneath him, even standing as much as his mom every so often.

Watch a Scene From the Last Episode of ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’

“Up and Down the Dial” doesn’t search to serve the entire present’s characters equally, one other indication that Wilson was positive he’d have time to proceed exploring WKRP’s workers. Like Sports activities Evening years later, the twist ending right here hinges on a plutocrat’s unlikely largess. The place show-within-a-self-titled-show Sports activities Evening’s seeming demise is saved by an outdoor billionaire deciding that broadcasting excellence and ambition are extra vital than huge earnings, WKRP (the station and the present) are apparently reprieved by Mom Carlson’s last-minute resolution that breaking her loyal however infantile son’s coronary heart isn’t well worth the tax break.

Sadly for each wonderful, behind-the-scenes sequence, the actual world doesn’t work that approach, leaving WKRP in Cincinnati’s seemingly rosier destiny abruptly reduce off by the chilly knife of commerce and community indifference. Ultimately, Andy and Venus, having spent their obvious final day of employment getting resentfully hammered, present up at Mrs. Carlson’s mansion, the place Sandy lets free Andy’s long-simmering resentment with a magnificently slurred and drawling, “I’m uninterested in your crud … ,” earlier than lastly crumpling with the sloshed Venus to the ground.

WKRP did return in 1991, with Wilson making a syndicated sequel sequence, in the end renamed The New WKRP in Cincinnati. It was a equally bold effort to deal with the altering radio enterprise, however, with solely Sanders, Bonner and Bounce returning as regulars (Anderson, Hesseman and Reid popped in right here and there), it was one thing of a disappointing reunion that lasted 47 underwhelming episodes.

At the least, in promoting The New WKRP to syndication, Wilson didn’t must cope with CBS, whose fixed meddling with the present’s time slot discovered the forged complaining that even they didn’t know when it will be on. Including insult to that crippling damage, music rights stored WKRP off of house media for many years, with, initially, solely the primary season receiving a DVD launch, and that was marred by generic filler music and full lacking scenes (or scenes with soundalike actors when the unique rock tracks couldn’t be eliminated.) Fortunately, Shout! ponied up for about 85 p.c of the person music rights when it lastly launched a full DVD field set in 2015, permitting WKRP in Cincinnati to reclaim its place on the cultural dial as top-of-the-line sitcoms ever made.