WKRP in Cincinnati

Um, and he also has this music video where he has these basically deepfakes of all the principal actors in the show, and they're kinda dancing along with him.

And there's this meta-narrative where Gordon Jump from WKRP, who played like a, um, a purveyor of CSAM, uh, o- on a very special episode of Different Strokes.

In the video, Gordon Jump gets, like, beaten up with a baseball bat and tied up and put into the back of a trunk and eventually, like, put in jail by the Different Strokes kids, um, as this, like, long-awaited, uh, revenge for the crimes that he committed on, on, on the show 40 years ago.

Um, and I just-- it was one of the most creative uses of, uh, of AI that I've seen in the music space or heard in the music space recently.

He was in

WKRP, Cincinnati, Frank's Place, all those

shows.

He's in a bunch.

All these different people that just come in, you know, uh, to be a part of it.

We were, we were doing a comedy panel, one of the first comedy panels, and Tim Reid from WKRP in Cincinnati was in the audience.

[laughs]

And we said, "Get up here." And it was just kind of one of those things that, you know, uh, the movies that come in from all over the world...

There you go.

Remember the old WKRP theme song? They used to do that for local stations, too.

They would be, I'm at, and then you put in a local station.

So they used to do that, too.

Job security becomes questionable, and the idea of moving multiple times over the next 10 years, like, you know, 10 times, which a lot of radio announcers do.

I mean, remember the theme song from WKRP in Cincinnati, the sitcom from way back, late '70s? You know, "You can hear me up and down the dial." I mean, this was the life of a disc jockey back then in the '60s and the '70s.

Oh, some people stayed in a small market because that was their home, but most trying to get to a better living were willing to move, to get out of small-town radio to medium-sized radio to big town and then major market, and that was my goal.

And when I finally did become an announcer in a major market, it hit me one day, it's not all it's cracked up to be.

Yes, we talk about some of the more obvious points of interest, reciting shrimp recipes in Forrest Gump, sitting next to Nick Cage on Con Air, and playing alongside Pacino in Heat, just to name a few.

But beyond that, he offers up a no-holds-barred explanation about his departure from the cast of the new WKRP in Cincinnati, details an awkward moment with Ed Asner on the Bronx Zoo, and reveals the remarkable amount of support he received from George C. Scott after working with him on the Showtime remake of 12 Angry Men.

And along the way, we make brief stops on Soul Train, Streets of Fire, Bay City Blues, and hell, this man even has a Joey Travolta story.

Well, that's probably enough of an intro.

I concur, just from what I'm seeing anyway.

Yeah.

Well, I have to tell you that in prepping for this conversation, it's not for the faint of heart to try alternating between episodes of The Drop and the new WKRP in Cincinnati, but I did it.

Really? Someone has uploaded them to the Internet Archive.

Okay.

It's one Arthur Carlson, yeah, WKRP in Cincinnati.

[laughs]

Wait, is it really?

Hmm

... and I was born before the show came on.

But when I was a kid, everybody always like, "Oh," like, "uh, the big guy from WKRP in Cincinnati." And I was like, "Yeah, that's, uh, that's true." But the best is what Gordon Jump played, um, Arthur Carlson, and I don't...

He was also known for playing the bicycle repair- the bicycle man in, um, the Diff'rent Strokes where, um, um, Arnold's friend gets, uh-