...
So just sit right down, relax, open your ears real wide and say, "Give it to me straight, Doctor. I can take it!"
When a Cincinnati radio station switches from sedate music to top-40 rock 'n' roll, its staff of oddball characters is forced to switch gears quickly. New programming director Andy Travis brings in a new DJ named Venus Flytrap to work with the station's burned-out veteran, Dr. Johnny Fever. Neurotic newsman Les Nessman, eager beaver Bailey Quarters, sleazy salesman Herb Tarlek, blonde bombshell Jennifer Marlowe, who serves as the station's ultra-capable receptionist, and station manager Arthur Carlson, whose domineering mother owns WKRP, round out the eccentric bunch.
After the station receives a bomb threat, Andy sends Johnny and Venus to broadcast from the transmitter tower while the station is being searched.
Andy is unable to warn Johnny and Venus when he realizes that the bomb is at the transmitter.
The staff of WKRP considers joining a union. Mr. Carlson is furious and rushes to his mother for advice, while Andy tries to appear neutral in this labor-management conflict.
While his apartment is being fumigated, Johnny accepts Bailey's offer to stay at her place, causing everyone at the station to think that the two are sleeping together. Johnny's also afraid that he's in danger of losing his time slot to Rex, the afternoon DJ, and when Bailey tries to cheer him up, he mistakes her friendliness for a come-on.
Herb tells everyone that he's going on vacation, but Les and Jennifer discover that he's actually checked into the hospital for heart tests.
With Herb in the hospital, Mr. Carlson pretends he is Herb and is impersonated by Les for an advertising client.
When Johnny receives $24,000 in a legal settlement, Venus convinces him to use the money to invest in a condominium at Gone With the Wind Estates.
Colonel Buchanan, Jennifer's elderly gentleman friend, dies suddenly. As executrix of his will, Jennifer must deal with the press and with the Colonel's money-grubbing, rumor mongering relatives.
Mama Carlson hires a professional radio consultant to evaluate WKRP. The man she's hired, Norris Breeze, is an old friend of Andy's who also runs a radio programming service. Andy soon realizes that Breeze intends to give the station a bad report unless it subscribes to the service.
Andy starts taking Mama Carlson out after hours in the hopes of getting her to pay for a new transmitter for the station. But he begins to suspect that she might have more-than-businesslike expectations of him.
Mr. Carlson goes with Carmen to a college reunion where he learns the disillusioning truth about how he and Carmen first met; Bailey is frustrated in her attempts to get a computer for billing; Venus can't get a moment alone in the booth with his latest date.
Herb sells ad spots to a seller of ""diet pills""; after it turns out that the pills are a legalized way of selling speed to teenagers, it also turns out that the station can't legally get out of running the ads.
When Venus learns that he's going to be interviewed by a militant black magazine, he adopts a new wardrobe and manner in order to seem more in touch with black culture. Meanwhile, Jennifer offers to change Herb's image, starting with picking out new, tasteful clothes for him.
When a fire destroys the kitchen at the Vine Street Mission, Johnny recruits Jennifer to help raise the $40,000 dollars to rebuild it. Jennifer throws a party for her rich friends and asks them to contribute, and everything is going fine until the contributors meet the people involved.
Herb fixes Les up with a date through his latest client, the I'll Take Romance Dating Service. Les hits it off with his date immediately, not knowing that the dating service is a front for prostitution.
Venus's latest date gives him an expensive diamond earring as a gift and then runs out on him; it turns out that she's a thief who has used the stolen earring to frame Venus as her accomplice.
Herb and Jennifer are trapped in an elevator when a fire breaks out in the Flimm Building.
When Bailey writes a news story on the Northside Children's Clinic, Les steals it and reads it on the air. This turns out to be a blow to the station's integrity in more ways than one when Bailey admits that she fictionalized part of the story.
When Venus lets it slip that he was a schoolteacher before he came to WKRP, Andy has to tell Mama Carlson the truth about how he hired Gordon Sims as a DJ and how they came up with the persona of Venus Flytrap.
On his birthday, Les announces that he's going to New York to pursue his dream of becoming a world-famous broadcast journalist by auditioning for The CBS Evening News.
