After nearly five decades as a piece of television lore, the fictional radio station WKRP looks set to become a real-life Cincinnati call sign, Oak City Media owner D.P. McIntire told the Associated Press this week. McIntire, whose North Carolina nonprofit is handling the auction of the famous letters, said a transfer to a Cincinnati broadcaster is “done,” but he refused to disclose timing or the parties involved because of contractual limits.
“I cannot, by contract, tell you when. I cannot tell you who. But I can tell you, direct to the camera, WKRP, after 48 years, is coming to Cincinnati,” McIntire said, adding with certainty: “Book it! It’s done!” He also clarified that the move will be to radio, saying only, “It will be radio. But that’s all I can tell you at this time.” McIntire told the AP that Oak City Media had been prepared to hand off television-related suffixes WKRP‑TV and WKRP‑DT as well, but a separate group defaulted on an agreement to take those.
The development follows an August announcement by Raleigh community station 101.9 WKRP that it plans to cease broadcast operations in August 2025. For a decade the Raleigh station operated under the WKRP call letters; Oak City Media has indicated intellectual property tied to the brand — logos, slogans and related assets — may be put up for sale, with the call letters to be transferred at no additional charge as part of an intellectual-property sale.
The reported Cincinnati deal would mark the first time the WKRP letters have been used by a Cincinnati broadcaster, according to the Museum of Broadcast Communications. That is notable because the letters are best known from the CBS sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, which ran from 1978 to 1982 and followed the staff of a struggling radio station. The program’s cultural afterlife — including the enduring line “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly” — has kept the call sign in popular memory and made it a sought-after piece of nostalgia branding.
Oak City Media’s move to monetize the WKRP identity has drawn attention from broadcasters and fans alike. McIntire’s comments suggest a concrete plan to relocate the call letters to their fictional home city, but his refusal to name the prospective operator or give a timetable underscores that negotiations and regulatory steps remain. Federal Communications Commission rules govern call-sign assignments and transfers, and formal approval would be required before the letters could be reassigned to a Cincinnati frequency.
For Cincinnati listeners and media historians, the arrival of WKRP would be symbolic as well as practical: a fictional station that lampooned industry foibles becoming an actual outlet in the city that inspired its name. How closely a future WKRP would hew to the sitcom’s image — whether it would adopt retro branding, use vintage slogans, or position itself as a community station — will not be known until Oak City Media and the buyer disclose terms or the FCC records surface.
Until then, McIntire’s announcement provides the clearest confirmation yet that the long-running pop-culture call sign is moving out of fiction and toward the FM dial in Cincinnati, even if fans must wait for the finer details.