In addition to old Harry O episodes on DVD, I've lately been catching vintage episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati on one of the eight hundred trillion cable channels I get. I keep forgetting what a fine, fine show that was.
I was a fan of this program even before it went on the air. Back when I was writing some show or other for Sid and Marty Krofft, we were working on the KTLA lot in Hollywood. Another writer, Lorne Frohman, and I would sometimes sit on a porch there and talk out ideas. One day, we began to notice…
No, let me rephrase that: One day, we couldn't help but notice a stunning blonde lady walking around in what they then called "hot pants." She was obviously an actress and obviously one who wanted to be noticed. Somewhere in some shoebox somewhere, Lorne probably has the negatives of photos we took of each of us with her.
She was Loni Anderson and she told us about this show she was doing on the lot…a new CBS situation comedy set in a radio station. I took special interest in that because my former partner Dennis and I had tried to sell a sitcom idea we had that was set in a radio station. Absolutely no one wanted it. They all said, "No one will watch a TV show set in a radio station." Dennis and I wound up recycling parts of our idea into an episode of Welcome Back, Kotter — the one in which George Carlin played a disc jockey and ABC had some interest in doing it as a Kotter spin-off if (a) Carlin would commit to a series and (b) Larry Hilton-Jacobs of the Kotter cast would commit to a new show. Neither gent would do it so that ended those discussions.
I never thought for a second that anyone behind WKRP had stolen our idea — and I'm sure we weren't the first or even the hundredth writers to come up with something in such a setting. No, when I heard about WKRP, I instantly wanted it to succeed just because of all the folks who'd told us, "No one will watch a TV show set in a radio station."
Loni invited us to come watch a taping or even just rehearsals so one day, we played hooky from our show and took in a dress rehearsal of theirs. It was the one in which Howard Hesseman's character did a live remote from a stereo store and there was a robbery during the broadcast. Whether the public would think the series was funny or not, I had no idea…but I sure did. (If we'd gone over two weeks later, we could have seen the infamous "Turkeys Away" episode. It's amazing that a show would do its most popular episode as Show 7, I think before they were even on the air.)
When WKRP in Cincinnati finally did get on CBS's airwaves, it was a modest success and wound up being on for four seasons…though neither CBS nor the production company ever really treated it as a hit. The network kept moving its time slot and not giving it a lot of promotion. It was an MTM show but when I later did some work for MTM and mentioned how much I liked it, the attitude I got back was, "Oh, yeah. That's one of ours." In the executive office, there were big posters of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda and The Bob Newhart Show and some others that lasted one or two seasons (or less than one)…but no love at all for WKRP, which was then in its third or fourth year on the air.
Well, at least some of us appreciated it and I still do, though I've decided to stop watching reruns until I get the new, soon-to-be-released DVD set. As you may know, there has been a problem with its after(network)life. The show often used actual, famous rock recordings on its soundtrack and frequently made reference to specific songs. There were some large expenses involved in retaining that music in off-network reruns and home video releases. To save dough, much of it was cut and replaced with "sound-alike" or alternate recordings. That also meant some major editing and even redubbing of dialogue in some episodes.
The good people at Shout Factory have announced that their forthcoming set will include "most" of the original music. Here's an article telling what stays and what goes. I'm guessing this is as "complete" a release of WKRP as we're ever going to get, at least via the non-bootleg trade. So I've advance-ordered it. If you're interested, here's the link. I find a lot of the shows from that era do not withstand the passage of time well. This one does.