Sunday 31 August 2008

Deep Questions

B: "Ryan?"
R: "Mmm?"
B: "Is there really a WKRP in Cincinnati?"
R: "...I've never thought about it before."

1 comment:

Unknown said...

From Wikipedia...

The first assignment of the callsign was in September 1979 [5], to a new, daytime only, AM station in Dallas, Georgia, in the metro Atlanta area. At first, the FCC denied the call letters to the new station, stating that MTM had a 'hold' on the callsign. When the station's lawyer pointed out to the FCC, "MTM is neither a licensee, nor a permittee. Therefore, MTM has no legal basis to reserve the WKRP callsign", they allowed the assignment. In August 1989, the station switched to its current calls, WDPC.

The call letters WKRP (supposedly a pun on the word "crap") are currently assigned to a low-power TV station (WKRP-LP) in Alexandria, Tennessee.[6] The call letters are not currently assigned to any AM or FM radio station, and any potential user would have to obtain permission from the TV station owners and the FCC. These call letters were most recently assigned to an AM station in North Vernon, Indiana, about 60 miles from Cincinnati, but the call sign was changed to WNVI in 1997 (the station's calls are now WJCP). Another television station, WLPX-TV in Charleston, West Virginia, held the "WKRP" calls from 1988 to 1998, when the call letters were changed to its present calls. However, the calls were never used on-air -- the station did not sign on until August 31, 1998, after the calls were changed.

Though WKRP was never identified by frequency in the original series (although it was on the AM dial), it was identified as being at AM 1530 in the 1991 series remake (which, in reality, was the frequency for WCKY). Coincidentally, Cincinnati boasts the similarly-named WKRC in Cincinnati. Except for almost identical call letters and currently being CBS affiliates, there is no known connection between the two entities. At the time of series' airing, the CBS affiliate in Cincinnati was WCPO.