- Network
- CBS
- Creator
- Hugh Wilson
- Original run
- 1978-1982
- Seasons
- 4
- Episodes
- 90
- Sequel
- The New WKRP, 1991-1993
Watch Order
0 / 5 watchedThe four CBS seasons in order, then the sequel as an optional epilogue.
Original series
Optional sequel
About WKRP in Cincinnati
WKRP in Cincinnati is a CBS sitcom created by Hugh Wilson about a struggling AM radio station that switches from easy listening to rock. The staff is the joke: Andy Travis tries to manage a station whose sales manager is a plaid-suited disaster, whose news director thinks he is Edward R. Murrow, and whose morning DJ is a burned-out hippie. It ran four seasons and 90 episodes from September 1978 to April 1982.
Wilson based the station on WQXI in Atlanta, where he had worked, and chose the call letters because WKRP was unused and stood for C-R-A-P. The ensemble was Gary Sandy, Howard Hesseman, Gordon Jump, Loni Anderson, Tim Reid, Jan Smithers, Richard Sanders and Frank Bonner. CBS moved the show around the schedule from the middle of season 2, ratings fell, and it was cancelled, then became a much bigger hit in syndication.
The sequel, The New WKRP in Cincinnati, ran in first-run syndication from 1991 to 1993 with Jump, Sanders and Bonner returning and Hesseman guesting. It is a later, separate show and is optional. There is no prequel, no reboot and no film, so the four seasons are the whole main story.
Good to know
The music is the reason this guide needs a warning. WKRP was built around real records, and the licensing contracts did not cover later syndication or DVD, so most versions replaced the songs with soundalikes and cut scenes that depended on them. Shout! Factory's 2014 complete-series set restored the original music. If a streaming version sounds wrong, that is why.
Watch the four seasons in order. There are running jokes and staff changes, but no arc that requires a different sequence. "Turkeys Away" from season 1 is the famous one, and it is not a bad test episode, though the show gets better once the ensemble settles.
The New WKRP is a reunion more than a continuation: Andy Travis never appears, and the station has fallen apart again. Watch it after the original if you want more, not before. The 11-minute U.S. Treasury special sometimes listed with the series is not an episode.
