Bill Dial. What a fine, talented gentlemen. May his soul rest in peace.
As noted in the link to
Pittsburgh Radio & TV Online, Atlanta's WQXI (
Quizie in Dixie), the legendary AM Top 40, served as an inspiration for many of the episodes of WKRP, including the famous Turkey Drop episode.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!!!"
- Arthur Carlson, WKRP in Cincinnati
In our careers, we've all been involved in some great and not-so-great station promotions. As to WKBW's influence on particular WKRP episodes, JM, it's quite likely that a station as big as KB would have some kind of influence on the writers and producers, even if it was a third-hand recollection or writer's embellishment. Casey Piotrowski, who co-wrote one of the episodes, would be a great source of WKRP stories if we could get him to this board.
Jeff Kaye, Sandy Beach, Don Berns, Tom Shannon and Dan Neaverth, Sr. have told some great tales on the air, at Buffalo Broadcasters events and in print interviews. I'd not heard about the "song hook promotion" that went bad, as recounted by Bob1370. That may have happened when Bob Harper or Sandy Beach was PD of KB.
Jeff Kaye liked to tell of a K-Big promotion that started off on a wobbly leg. It was one of his biggest promotions, late 60's, I'm guessing. KB was giving away Datsun 240-Z's, wildly desirable cars, one a week for five weeks, IIRC. To win, listeners were required to correctly guess the exact milage of the vehicle after it had been driven around WNY for a week by the KB VIPs. Seems one listener diligently and clendestinely followed the Z as was driven around WNY and nailed the milage, winning the first Z on the first day of the contest. The remaining Z's were given away in a more challenging manner.
Even though I was a fan of the show, I didn't see every episode of WKRP. Don't recall the writers of WKRP never lampooned that particular KB-240-Z promotion.
Here's another KB-Classic.
Some time in the late 60s or early 70s, (possibly 1968 or 1972) when WYSL and WKBW were going at each other mano a mano, each station did their "clean up the election signs" promotion after the November elections. It was a great way to get points with the FCC for license renewal as it was a community minded public service type of promotion. The school that collected the most signs got a station-sponsored dance.
If you think Kiss or any other CHR stations were the first to do things of this nature, please! Anyway, on collection day, both stations were busy in their parking lots, as listeners young and old from all over WNY brought in bundles of cardboard election signs (corrugated plastic signs were unheard of at that time.)
KB assessed each contestant's election sign booty by
weighing the bundles. WYSL assessed the signs by
counting each sign. You can almost see where this is going.
After listeners brought their signs to KB to be weighed, Jeff openly advised listeners to take their signs to 425 Franklin street and drop them off at WYSL. Crazy like a fox. WKBW was left with a minimal clean-up, but WYSL's 425 Franklin street parking lot (about a quarter the size of KB's lot) was so littered with cardboard and trash that a number of dumpsters had to be rented to accomodate the clean up.
That promotion would have made a dandy WKRP sketch. Radio Warfare 101, Buffalo style.
There are plenty more of these types of tales from the days of 97 Rock vs. WBUF vs. WZIR vs. WUWU vs. WPHD, but I've already taken up too many pixels.
