WKRP Creator Hugh Wilson Signs Off
• Hugh Wilson, who created the seminal sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, the show that made many of us want to pursue a career in radio, died over the weekend at his home in Albemarle County, VA. He was 74. That’s the word from The Hollywood Reporter. Wilson, who also directed The First Wives Club, Guarding Tess and two Brendan Fraser films, Blast From the Past and Dudley Do-Right, to name a few, will best be remembered as the creator of WKRP in Cincinnati, which was set at a fictional rock station in Cincinnati and ran on CBS from 1978-82.
WKRP starred Howard Hesseman as Dr. Johnny Fever and Tim Reid as Venus Flytrap; Gary Sandy as the PD, Gordon Jump as GM Arthur Carlson; Frank Bonner as sales manager Herb Tarlek; Richard Sanders as mousey newsman Les Nessman; Jan Smithers as traffic/billing rep Bailey Quarters and Loni Anderson as WKRP’s comely receptionist, Jennifer Marlowe.
Wilson was a writer at MTM Enterprises, working on The Tony Randall Show when he approached then MTM head Grant Tinker with an idea for another comedy based on his experience as a sales executive at a Top 40 station in Atlanta. “I told Grant, and we went over to CBS, and they all said, ‘Yeah, hey, great,'” Wilson said during a 2012 oral-history discussion about one of the series’ greatest episodes, the immortal Turkeys Away. “What was lucky for me was that most of those guys… had at one time or another been in the radio business. I hadn’t counted on having that kind of built-in affection for the idea.”
Probably because it changed time slots 12 times on the CBS schedule, WKRP — always a critical darling — had trouble finding a sizable network audience. However, it became a huge hit in first-run syndication after its original airing and spawned The New WKRP in Cincinnati, which aired another two years on local stations.
