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Chapter Five "CBS in the Valley" The Second Season At the entrance to CBS Studio City's Sound Stage 1\vo is a plaque that reads: "On this stage a company of loving and talented friends produced a television classic. The Mary Tyler Moore Show 1970-1977" (Alley, Brown 237). In its second season, WKRP set up shop at this historic site (Sanders). The new home seemed appropriate; after all, Hugh and Company were also a group ofloving and talented friends. While some of the players would fondly recall the closeness of K1LA, others welcomed the change. CBS Studio City-affectionately referred to as the MTM Lot--certainly offered more amenities. Gordon Jump, an avid chef, was given a room with a kitchen; in return, Jump agreed to make his famous lasagna for the cast and crew at least once per season. Howard Hesseman, who often referred to the MTM lot as "CBS in the Valley," seemed to enjoy its privacy and comfort. "It was infinitely more comfortable," said Hesseman. "I mean, not to denigrate the lot we were at the fIrst season, but MTM still had-from the old studio days-standing dressing rooms. I mean, they had adjacent dressing rooms that were real rooms. 1\vo stories of them built on the outside of the sound stage itself. I had a lovely corner dressing room that over-looked where the L.A. river passes by on the edge of that 10t..I looked down over the greensmen's area where all the gardens werewhere the greensmen keep all the green, growing stuff that they use to decorate sets. "It was a large room with a couple of couches and a desk and a phone and table and a big wardrobe armoire, and a full bathroom with a huge shower in it. So, when I finished a show I could go up and take off my wardrobe and get in the shower, scrub off my make-up, get all that crap off of me, and get dressed. There was room for six, eight, ten people to sit out in my dressing room while I was doing this. And we 69 70 America's Favorite Radio Station could go out and eat-go do something. Much different than most dressing room facilities allow an actor" (Hesseman). Personal comfort was not the only improvement. Now part of the MTM mainstream, the inhabitants of the "island unto itself' could breath a little easier. "There's a nice thing that happens when you're working on a hit show," observed Blake Hunter. "You're a little more secure...The first year-it was a little nip and tuck there. That happens with all shows, by the way. Unless you're a Cosby or a Roseanne that starts out to be a huge hit. But, usually it takes a while for the show to catch on" (Hunter). WKRP had "caught on." In the fast part of the second season, still in it's 9:30 time slot, an average of 17,600,000 people were tuning in. The average share for the period between September 17 - December 3, 1979 was 34.2, with no share dipping below the all-important 30 mark. This success brought attention from a variety of groups, which, not surprisingly, included the recording industry. "We did play some songs as they were coming out," recalled Wilson, "and the record labels, they figured this out pretty quickly. So they're trying to break records allover the place; why not break records on a radio station that 14 million people are watching every week? "So I got on the mailing list for radio stations..Jt was great..J got God knows how many free records, and I got all these displays...we put the displays actually in the station, which the legal department went nuts over, because they hate to mention any brand names or actual things, you know. And we started putting these posters up in the station and I became inundated with...sales men were calling on me and...it was kind of fun... "You should have seen my office. I looked like a point of purchase manufacturer. I'd take them home to the kids and they were thrilled" (Wilson). Real Issues for Real People With the realism of the station firmly established, it stood to reason that WKRP would involve itself with a number of real world issues; in fact, the list of topics presented during its second...

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