And when you needed more time than Stairway could give you, and were too chicken to tape the show in advance, there was always the 17 minutes and 5 seconds of “Inna-Gadda-da-Vita.”
—Hometownboy, who started in 1966 at his hometown 250-watt Class IV AM station and still is on (a modest) retainer as a voice talent at a 100,000 watt Class C FM while he enjoys a second career as a newspaper editor.
Hell, there was one time a car pulled into our parking lot and burst into flames (engine fire.) The news director was reading the news when he saw the station manager running past with a bucket of water. Seconds later he saw someone else run past with a fire extinguisher. All the time reading with a perfectly modulating voice while trying to gesture “what the hell is happening out there!!!”
We called up “wrapping” – as in, wrapping splicing tape around the capstan. The bigger the diameter of the capstan, the faster the tape would go past the heads. We didn’t do it for time, we did it to make the music sound “brighter.”
Oddly enough, every jock I ever knew could complete the “other” activities auring a standard length song. Some of them were even engaging in other activities while the mic was open. We saved “Stairway” for legitimate bathroom breaks. OTOH hand, for a really special “other” activity, we had to let the old tube transmitter cool down for 15 minutes after signoff before we could shut down the fans and close the studio.
Here’s another one. Did you ever dump an ashtray full of smoldering cigaret butts into the same trash can you had just cleared 12 hours worth of wire service copy into?
Let’s write a book, you guys! 
Thanks for the memories, and no, I never dumped any cigarette butts, but I did have a “Six-Pack a Shift” Coca-Cola habit!
Hello?
Guys?
kunilou?
Hometownboy?
Damn!
Guess it’s a good thing I never smoked any “Mary Jane” either.
Q
Quasi and kuni I had the same there’s-a-book-in-this feeling when I read some of your posts above.
I’ll share one quick story.
I was a high school kid working at the local station. The morning man was a fun-loving guy who mostly treated me nicely and occasionally tried to break me up on air. Here’s the scene: I’m just getting into my five-minute rip-and-read newscast when I see him come into the studio on the other side of the glass. He has in his hand a duck call of the era - a black hose with ribs in the side, about an inch in diameter and six or so inches long. There was a noisemaker in the end of the tube that would sound like a duck quacking when you’d wiggle the tube. He stands at the edge of a table, places a quarter on the table, puts one end of the tube at his -ahem- groin area with one hand, and with the other whips the tube like a golf club, driving the quarter across the room. I almost kept it together, but there were some strangled words in that newscast. It must have sounded as if a bee flew up my nose. He was holding his sides laughing, and escaped the station before I could finish the newscast and chase him out. Ah, such fun…
This is probably the right thread to ask: has it ever been verified that there are actual lyrics to the song over the show’s end credits? I’ve always thought that the guy was just “vocalizing” and that there weren’t really any words. I’d like to be proven wrong, though, because I still can’t make out anything in it that sounds like English. How about you guys?
Sadly, the days of small-town radio are all but gone, and I am sure there are so many stories left to tell.
Sometimes, while travelling on vacation, I’ll still scan the AM-Band and listen, and reminisce.
By the way, (and in keeping with the OP) we used to have a station here in Dallas (AM) that had the call-letters WKRP, and there was some controversy about the usage of those letters in the TV show, but I don’t know how that ever turned out because it happened while I was still on the air in Carrollton.
Thanks
Quasi
For those of you who have been in broadcasting (and to keep from hikacking the intent of this thread-thanks BTW, OP!) I created a new thread in this forum called “Radio Days”, and if y’all are so inclined, please join me there to reminisce.
Thanks
Quasi
I wish Hollywood would playhard-ball with these “artists” who hold up releases with outrageous $$ demands for using their songs. Not saying that they don’t deserve something for their talents but sometimes the demands are so ridiculous that the DVDs would need stratospheric pricing to cover the artists fee. Isn’t some money better than no money?
The studios should compile a list of these artists and publish it so the buying public can learn who the assholes are.
If they could finally get deals in place for Miami Vice, surely they could do the same for WKRP.
I’d actually like to see this in various instances- not only in the cases in which music has to be changed, but other cases as well. The studios have to fill out things called “cue sheets” for movies and TV shows which list the name of the song, how long the excerpt is, and the name of the songwriter and publisher for royalty purposes. In movies, the songs are listed in the credits, but I’d love to see virtual cue sheets on TV shows and (especially) old cartoons, especially Carl Stalling (Warner Bros.) scores and such which sample various popular songs the studio happened to own. I think all of Stalling’s cue sheets are held by the University of Wyoming, but I’m not going to go all the way over there just for that.