It's Up and Down the Dial

Ask anyone who has been in radio any length of time, especially before two or three ice-cold and antiseptic corporations took over the industry, and they will likely tell you they worked with some of the characters on WKRP in Cincinnati.

This would make sense because the series was based, in part, on creator Hugh Wilson’s experiences in the business.

Even radio people in Cincinnati admitted that, yes, there is some truth in the series. Let’s hear from some of them in this wire service story from November 28, 1979.

‘WKRP’ Comedy Isn’t All Fiction For Cincinnati
By RICHARD H. GROWALD
United Press International
CINCINNATI — In the WNOP studios floating on the Ohio River disc jockey Leo Underhill wobbled out of his glass cage.
“Oh, my God, I need another Alka-Seltzer,” he said. “It’ll be my fourth this morning.”
He held his head as if in pain, and maybe he was, and subsided like a rumpled Teddy bear into a chair in Program Director Ray Scott’s office in the three red water-tank cylinders that float on the river and serve as the home of the radio station.
The office wobbled like a ship at sea. Scott suggested perhaps Underhill was seasick.
“It’s not that ‘avast ye matey and all that bad stuff this time. I got a hangover,” Underhill said. “Where’s that Alka-Seltzer?”
“See?” said Scott. “We are not WKRP. The television program station plays rock. WNOP plays jazz.”
THE CBS television show “WKRP in Cincinnati” is as popular here as in the rest of the country and Cincinnati’s actual AM radio stations take the televised comedy as flattery, maybe.
“Take the television show character, Herb Tarlek, WKRP’s advertising salesman. That is accuracy. White shoes and white belts, all radio ad salesmen wear ’em,” Underhill said.
Ashore in the studios of WCKY, whose midtown offices have the indirect lighting and soft carpeting of corporate success, News Director Mark Neeley said, “We have seven account executives. We don’t call them salesmen. And we have no disc jockeys, we have radio personalities or hosts.”
Afloat in WNOP, Underhill took his hands away from his head, looked at them and seem delighted and surprised they were clean of blood. “Of course, there is no such thing as a radio account executive. They are salesmen, as I said. And let me tell you salesmen are very busy people.
“They attend all the cocktail parties.”
SCOTT SUGGESTED that Underhill did some drinking, too. “Yes, yes,” said Underhill. “I drink pretty good.”
Scott: “Drinking is a way of life on this station.”
Underhill: “Well, we had this preacher working as a disc jockey. He did drink."
Scott: “Preacher man tried to keep up with me and you, Leo.”
Underhill: “And he died of it.”
Scott: "But give him credit. He held on as long as he could.” Underhill: “I knew the end was coming for him when he started substituting bourbon for sacramental wine.”
Scott: “When the WKRP show was in the making, their producer or someone came and looked us over. He went away rather hurriedly. It shows. The characters on the show don’t drink too much.”
Underhill: “And they never did have Miss Nude Universe at WKRP. We did. She came in one day while I was on the air. First thing she did in the studio was rip off the top part of her costume.
“I ASKED IF that was all Miss Nude Universe did. It didn't seem enough for her image. Well, she then ripped off the bottom part. I was reporting this to the folks out in radioland and one of our disc jockeys, Gary Stephenson, was at home and heard and jumped in his car to come down and see for himself.
“The cops arrested Gary for speeding. He missed Miss Nude Universe. I didn’t.”
Scott: "Leo, you’re just a radio personality.”
Underhill: “No, I’m a disc jockey.”
In Cincinnati’s Hyde Park Square area station WEBN was broadcasting its top 40 formula. “We are nothing at all like WKRP,” said Program Director Denton Marr, wearing dark glasses in his unsunlit room.
“In WKRP the station is owned by the general manager’s mother.
“Here at WEBN the station is owned by the general manager’s father.”
HE LAUGHED. “WKRP’s disc jockey Johnny Fever is a tame version of me. Here we think of ourselves less as a radio station and more of a stage. Like our Fool’s Day Parades.”
He described how each year WEBN staged the annual parade, using crowd sound effects and disc jockeys describing the parade moving through Hyde Park Square out-front.
"Yes,” said WEBN news reporter Rick Bird. “I can hear it now. Ladies and gentlemen, here comes now the Our Lady of Perpetual Motion Marching Band. Sound effects of roaring crowds.
“And now here comes the Greater Cincinnati Cocaine Dealers Association snowmobile! Sounds of wild crowd noises.”
Director Marr said, “You know those broadcasts actually brought people from all around to Hyde Park Square to see the Fool’s Day Parade. There was nothing to see, of course. Eat your heart out, WKRP.”
MARR SAID WEBN has had one bit of woe however. It concerns the station's promotion of its mythical symbol, mascot and hero, the WEBN Frog. The disc jockeys each election ask voters to write in the Frog.
“We really don't know how many votes Frog got for president in Cincinnati in the 1976 election,” Marr said. “The board of election won’t tell us. All we know was that Frog got enough write-ins so the board had to delay its 1976 tally for 12 hours to hand-count all the ballots.”
At the more ordered WCKY, radio personality Wirt Cain acknowledged he and his station colleagues run more to neckties than the disc jockeys of WNOP and WEBN. “And WKRP is a slight overstatement of a sampling of many radio stations. No one station could succeed with all those characters.”
“And WCKY has no turntables in its studio. We use tape,” Neeley said.
And in the WCKY lobby there was no sign of the doubly breasted Jennifer Malone, the WKRP receptionist played by Loni Anderson. In the WCKY lobby sits the very married Allene Marrs.
“The account executives do not chase me,” she said. “They better not. I’m three times a grandmother.”

Mr. Neeley’s station probably doesn’t use tape these days. Fewer and fewer disc jockeys have ever edited audio tape or a cued up a 45 or patched in a remote. Even fewer have picked their own music for their shows. I must admit, I did all those things during my career when WKRP was still in first run. Then there was the time in 1976 the farm director was late so we called him at home, woke him up, told him he was on the air and he ad-libbed a three minute report, half-asleep. He should have won a Silver Sow for that. I even reported live on a shopping centre fire from a phone booth across the street. No turkeys dropped, though. That couldn’t have happened in real life.

Or could it?