Raleigh, NC — Hold on to those Thanksgiving turkeys! WKRP is coming to Cincinnati for real this time.
“I, contractually, can’t tell you when. I can’t tell you who. But I can tell you straight on camera, WKRP, after 48 years, is coming to Cincinnati,” DP McIntyre, who runs the media nonprofit that auctioned off the famous call letters, told The Associated Press. “Book it! It’s done!”
The call sign was made famous by the CBS television sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati”, which ran from 1978 to 1982. It made stars of actors like Lonnie Anderson and Richard Sanders, whose bumbling newsman Les Nessman reported on a Thanksgiving promotion that went awry when it went live, with all but flightless turkeys dropped from helicopters.
McIntyre remembers watching the show’s first episode in the living room with his parents and older sister – featuring disc jockeys Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Heisman) and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reed).
“And at the end of the 30-minute episode,” he said, “I got up and I announced, ‘I’m going to get into radio. And if I ever get the opportunity, I’m going to run a station called WKRP.'”
McIntyre said he got his first on-air job at age 13 as a news anchor at WNQQ “Wink FM” in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.
Fast forward to 2014, when his North Carolina-based nonprofit acquired the call sign from the Federal Communications Commission. Stations in Dallas, Georgia and Alexandria, Tennessee previously had these letters.
McIntyre laughs as he recalls his conversation with a woman in the agency’s audio division.
He had two sets of call letters in mind. She told him she needed a third.
“Being the joker that I am, I said, ‘Okay, if you need three, and if it’s available, we’ll take WKRP,'” he said. “And 90 seconds later, she came back and she said, ‘Mr. McIntyre. Congratulations. You’re the general manager of WKRP in Raleigh, North Carolina.'”
WKRP-LP – 101.9 on the FM dial – went live November 30, 2015. LP stands for “low power”, this is a class of station designed to serve a more local audience that does not want mass market content.
“Our format is what radio was in small-town America 35 years ago,” he said. “Great songs from the 80s, sounds from the 70s, a rewind to the 90s.”
LPFM is limited to non-profit organizations like their Oak City Media, and it is decidedly local.
“Your broadcast power is limited to 100 watts,” McIntyre said. “So, your average range, depending on your terrain and conditions, is between 4 and 12 miles (6 and 19 kilometers) in any direction. Enough to cover a small town.”
And, by necessity, it’s a low-budget affair.
The transmitter is in a corner of McIntyre’s garage, between the recycling bin and cleaning supplies. The broadcast antenna is located atop a 25-foot (7.62-metre) metal flagpole in the backyard. The studio – a mixing board connected to microphones and computers – is in McIntyre’s basement.
Like television’s WKRP, McIntyre and his partners are ready to be “outrageous.” One of their offerings is a two-hour show called “Weird Al and Friends”, which focuses on the satirical works of Weird Al Yankovic.
They also had an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. But don’t call the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals—they give away gift certificates to a local grocery store.
“We don’t throw them out of helicopters,” he said, laughing.
After 10 years on the air, McIntyre, 56, decided it was time to hand over the reins.
“We are in a situation where older members like me, who started the station, are handing over leadership to younger members,” he said. “He’s not interested in radio.”
They bid to use the call letters on FM and AM radio, as well as television and digital television.
They intend to use the proceeds to fund a new non-profit venture called Independent Broadcast Consultants. He said the IBC “will be specifically designed to help these new broadcasters get up and running, giving them the mentorship they need to hopefully be more successful than us.”
McIntyre said Oak City Media was all set to cede the television-related suffixes – WKRPTV and WKRPDT – when another group defaulted on the deal. But he said with the Cincinnati deal in the bag, he couldn’t legally discuss it.
“It would be radio,” he said. “But that’s all I can tell you right now.”
Whatever they do with the call sign, they hope it stays true to the show that inspired it.
“It has a special place in a lot of people’s hearts,” he said. “And we are very, very, very proud to be the custodians of that legacy.”
