TV Theme Song Top Ten: WKRP in Cincinnati (#10)

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Tune in today for the start of my top ten favorite theme songs from TV shows! In the top ten you’ll find a show I rarely watched, lots of favorites, all with a surprise or two thrown in. Let’s tune in for the first song in the top ten. #10: WKRP in Cincinnati - Steve Carlisle Earlier in the countdown I used the theme from The Monkees. It’s pretty amazing how the “passing fad” of rock and roll turned into a drawing card for television series! Here we have the tale of a struggling easy listening station turned on its ear with a new program director, who decides rock and roll is the way to go. That gave us one of the best sitcoms of the late 70s/early 80s. The ensemble cast was spectacular, highlighted by the late Howard Hesseman’s incredible Dr. Johnny Fever. The show wasn’t just fun and games, though: if you’ve never seen the episode that dealt with the station giving away tickets to the Who concert and Mr. Carlson even going and admitting he had a good time, only to discover that eleven people had been killed before the gates opened (a tribute to the event that happened in Cincinnati on December 3, 1979), you really DO need to watch it. (It’s on YouTube.) That and much less painful subjects (like poor Mr. Carlson [Gordon Jump] never really “getting” rock and roll, no matter how hard he tried, such as that time he went into the studio while Fever was playing Pink Floyd’s “Dogs” and asked, “Do I hear dogs barking? ”I do,” Fever replied ) were dealt with so, so well. And the best thing of all? The sexist stereotype of the “dumb buxom blonde” was smashed to bits, given that Jennifer (Loni Anderson) was the smartest one of them all. All of that and a great theme song. This was released as a single and was a modest MOR (“easy listening”) hit. How’s that for irony? WKRP in Cincinnati Written by Hugh Wilson and Tom Wells Recorded by Steve Carlisle From WKRP in Cincinnati, 1978-82 Town to town, up and down the dial: