{"id":468657,"date":"2026-05-04T23:33:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T23:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/468657\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T23:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T23:33:10","slug":"wkrp-in-cincinnati-now-exists-in-real-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/468657\/","title":{"rendered":"WKRP in Cincinnati Now Exists in Real Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tBaby, if you\u2019ve ever wondered \u2026\u00a0whether there\u2019s a real <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/radio\/\" id=\"auto-tag_radio_1\" data-tag=\"radio\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">radio<\/a> station called WKRP in Cincinnati, there is now.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tA station formerly known as \u201cThe Oasis\u201d bears the call letters made famous by the 1978-82 sitcom as of Monday. The station, 97.7 FM in the Cincinnati area, aired the WKRP theme song for six hours straight early Monday morning before the changeover became official. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe station will play classic rock and pop \u2014\u00a0music that viewers might have heard snippets of in episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati. Gary Sandy, who played program director Andy Travis on the series, recorded a series of promos for the station.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cWe play essentially the same music that they played on\u00a0WKRP,\u201d station owner Jeff Ziesmann <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wvxu.org\/media\/2026-05-04\/wkrp-cincinnati-oasis\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told public radio station WVXU<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cIt made more sense for us to do this than any other station in town.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tWKRP in Cincinnati also starred Howard Hesseman, Tim Reid, Loni Anderson, Gordon Jump, Jan Smithers, Frank Bonner and Richard Sanders. It ran for four seasons on CBS; a spinoff\/sequel, The New WKRP in Cincinnati, ran in syndication in the early 1990s and featured several cast members reprising their roles alongside some new characters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe WKRP call letters have been used by a handful of real radio stations in the past, though never in or near Cincinnati. They most recently belonged to a nonprofit, low-power FM station in Raleigh, North Carolina. That station put them up for auction in a fund-raising effort earlier this year, and Ziesmann\u2019s Grant County Broadcasters won the bidding.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe 97.7 FM frequency also has some pop cultural cachet. It was formerly home to the influential modern  rock station WOXY-FM, also known as 97X. Its late 1980s tagline was immortalized in the movie Rain Man, with Dustin Hoffman\u2019s character repeating \u201c97X \u2014 bang! \u2014\u00a0the future of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll\u201d several times in one scene. The WOXY call letters now belong to belong to a station in suburban Dayton, also owned by Ziesmann.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Baby, if you\u2019ve ever wondered \u2026\u00a0whether there\u2019s a real radio station called WKRP in Cincinnati, there is now.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[18,117,19,17,337,5485],"class_list":{"0":"post-468657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-radio"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116518925480658355","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}