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Fast forward to 2014, when his North Carolina-based nonprofit acquired the call sign from the Federal Communications Commission. Stations in Dallas, Georgia, and Alexandria, Tennessee, previously bore the letters.<\/p>\n
McIntire laughs as he recalls his chat with a woman in the agency\u2019s audio division.<\/p>\n
He had two sets of call letters in mind. She told him he needed a third.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing the jokester that I am, I said, `Well, if you need three, and if it\u2019s available, we\u2019ll take WKRP,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cAnd 90 seconds later, she came back and she said, `Mr. McIntire. Congratulations. You\u2019re the general manager of WKRP in Raleigh, North Carolina.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
WKRP-LP \u2014 101.9 on the FM dial \u2014 went live Nov. 30, 2015. The LP stands for \u201clow power,\u201d a class of station created to serve more local audiences that didn\u2019t want mass-market content.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur format is what radio used to be 35 years ago in small-town America,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is Greats of the \u201880s, Sounds of the \u201970s, \u201890s Rewind.\u201d<\/p>\n
LPFM is restricted to nonprofit organizations like his Oak City Media, and it\u2019s definitely local.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour broadcast capacity is limited to 100 watts,\u201d McIntire said. \u201cSo, your average range is between, depending on your terrain and circumstances, 4 and 12 miles (6 and 19 kilometers) in any direction. Enough to cover a small town.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, by necessity, it\u2019s a low-budget affair.<\/p>\n
The transmitter is in a corner of McIntire\u2019s garage, between a recycling bin and the cleaning supplies. The broadcast antenna sits atop a 25-foot (7.62-meter) metal flagpole in the backyard. The studio \u2014 microphones and a mixing board hooked up to a computer \u2014 is on the first floor of McIntire\u2019s home.<\/p>\n
Like the WKRP of television, McIntire and his partners set out to be \u201cirreverent.\u201d One of their offerings is a two-hour show called \u201cWeird Al and Friends,\u201d focusing on the satirical works of Weird Al Yankovic.<\/p>\n
They even had an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. But don\u2019t call the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals \u2014 they hand out gift certificates to a local grocery store.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t toss them out of helicopters,\u201d he said with a laugh.<\/p>\n
After more than a decade on the air, the 56-year-old McIntire decided it was time to pass the reins.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in a position where the older members like me who started the station are turning the leadership over to younger members,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re not interested in radio.\u201d<\/p>\n
They put out a call for bids to use the call letters on FM and AM radio, as well as television and digital television.<\/p>\n
They intend to use the proceeds for a new nonprofit venture called Independent Broadcast Consultants. He said IBC will be \u201cgeared specifically toward helping these new broadcasters get up and running, get the consulting that they need in order to be, hopefully, more successful than we have been.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oak City Media was all set to hand off the television-related suffixes \u2014 WKRPTV and WKRPDT \u2014 when another group defaulted on the agreement, McIntire said. But he said the Cincinnati deal is in the bag, he just can\u2019t legally discuss it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be radio,\u201d he said. \u201cBut that\u2019s all I can tell you at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robert Thompson, who uses a season 2 episode of \u201cWKRP\u201d in his TV history class at Syracuse University, said it\u2019s telling that people see real value in a fictional station whose call letters invoke the word \u201ccrap.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe value comes from the love of the characters for each other,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd now by buying this thing, the value comes from our love of the characters themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever they do with the call sign, McIntire hopes they will be true to the show that inspired it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has a special place in the hearts of an awful lot of people,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we have been very, very, very proud to have been a steward of that legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
This story has been updated to correct that the studio is on the first floor of the home, not the basement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) \u2014 Hold on to those Thanksgiving turkeys! WKRP is coming to Cincinnati \u2014 for real…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[138,3402,156,29279,3717,190570,190572,190573,1073,145022,157,100589,111,139,62386,3099,69,101314,13724,4965,114535,190571,89651,190569,5021],"class_list":{"0":"post-362148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cincinnati","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-federal-communications-commission","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-howard-hesseman","14":"tag-johnny-fever","15":"tag-loni-anderson","16":"tag-media","17":"tag-media-and-entertainment-industry","18":"tag-music","19":"tag-nc-state-wire","20":"tag-new-zealand","21":"tag-newzealand","22":"tag-nonprofits","23":"tag-north-carolina","24":"tag-nz","25":"tag-oh-state-wire","26":"tag-ohio","27":"tag-radio","28":"tag-raleigh","29":"tag-richard-sanders","30":"tag-thanksgiving","31":"tag-tim-reid","32":"tag-u-s-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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