Arthur Carlson

Before and after the format change

Carlson is a well-meaning, bumbling, childlike man who is completely out of touch with the changes that have occurred in the radio and music business since he started working in the pre-rock era of the early 1950s. He keeps his job as general manager of WKRP only because his mother, Lillian Carlson, better known as "Mama Carlson", owns the station. Unbeknownst to him, his mother has set up WKRP as a tax write-off that is intended to lose money, and she keeps him at the station not because she wants him to succeed but because she expects him to fail.

Flashbacks in the episode "Bah, Humbug" reveal that Carlson joined WKRP as sales manager in the early 1950s. When his mother fired the previous station manager for being too generous to the employees, Arthur got his job. (He tells Andy Travis that he's been general manager of the station since 1955.) WKRP then spent the next 20+ years as a "beautiful music" station, but with the rise of rock n' roll music, WKRP's seriously outdated format became a sure money-loser, appealing only to senior citizens. According to Carlson himself, by 1978 the station was losing $100,000 a year.

In the pilot of WKRP, the new program director, Andy Travis, convinces Carlson that switching the format to rock n' roll might make the station successful and profitable; Carlson, who wants desperately to prove to his mother that he can be a success, goes along with the change and even gets the nerve to defend Andy's changes to his mother. Only when Arthur shows that much backbone does his mother relent and keep to the format change....although it's much later revealed that she fully expects that format to be a money-loser as well.

"Management" style

Though he accepts the format change, Carlson is not a fan of rock n' roll music (though he does admit to Andy that he likes Crosby, Stills and Nash), and frequently does not even listen to his own station because he doesn't enjoy the songs or the modern, with-it styles of the disc jockeys. As the series goes on, however, Carlson becomes more accepting of the format and the changing cultural trends. In the episode "In Concert," after eleven kids are trampled to death at a concert by The Who (based on a real-life incident that happened in Cincinnati in 1979), the staff fears that Carlson, who feels guilty about having helped to promote the concert, will change their format back to "elevator music." But Carlson, who was at the concert and actually found himself enjoying the music (before he learned what happened), understands that the stadium's first-come, first-served seating was to blame for the tragedy, and not the band or the music. "We're a rock n' roll station," he declares, "and we're going to stay a rock n' roll station."

Because Carlson doesn't know much about music or business, he spends most of his time sleeping or playing with various toys he keeps in his office: model trains, a miniature basketball and hoop, or toy soldiers. He defends this practice by saying "I'm not a child -- I'm a hobbyist." He is also an avid fisherman, keeping several rods and reels in his office at all times and speaking eloquently of the joys of hooking a fish and then throwing it back.

Carlson has trouble dealing with people, especially with saying "no"; he will buy anything from a salesman (WKRP sales manager Herb Tarlek once sold him an insurance policy) and tends to whimper when someone yells at him. To protect him from the outside world, he depends on his receptionist, Jennifer Marlowe, whose main job is keeping people away from her boss by any means necessary, including telling them that he's dead. Jennifer and Carlson have an agreement: she doesn't take memos, and she doesn't serve coffee. ("Turkeys Away")

Despite these foibles, Carlson has a very strong sense of right and wrong, and at times, stands up for what he believes in and can even be confrontational. This is revealed in an episode where a sleazy photographer (George Wyner) snaps nude pictures of Jennifer as she is changing in another room following a cheesecake photo shoot with Andy Travis. When Carlson finds the pictures in the photographer's studio, he grabs the photographer by his shirt and threatens a lawsuit. In another episode, he gently but firmly supports Andy's decision to fire a new disc jockey replacing Johnny Fever, after it is proven that the DJ (Philip Charles MacKenzie) is being paid with cocaine under a payola plan with a record producer.

Personal life

Arthur Carlson was said to be 48 in a 1979 episode; this would give him a birth year of 1930 or '31. He comes from a successful family of Cincinnati business people. Arthur's grandfather, who is seen in one episode in a dream (also played by Gordon Jump), was a miserly businessman who built up Carlson Industries. He left it to Arthur's father, Hank, a sweet-natured man who was more interested in having a good time than running the business. Hank married Lillian, a former actress in Broadway musicals, who soon proved to have a talent for business and took the family business more seriously than Hank did. Eventually, Lillian took over the corporation entirely, and Hank died soon after. Because his father died when he was very young, Arthur Carlson was raised mostly by his mother and by her sarcastic butler, Hirsch (Ian Wolfe). Carlson was an officer in the Marine Corps; he has mentioned being at Guadalcanal as well having learned some Japanese. (However, note that any service in WWII would clash with a 1930/31 birthdate; Carlson would have to have been born circa 1924 or earlier in order to have participated in the Guadalcanal campaign. Note also that when he mentions Guadalcanal he is very drunk, and Jennifer, to whom he is speaking, assumes that he is remembering not WWII but a time when was on vacation.) In speaking with "Venus Flytrap", Carlson says he saw combat, but does not specify which war.

Mama Carlson belittles him and shows no open signs of affection; she rebuffs his attempts to hug him by pushing him aside and saying "keep away from me!" She admits to Andy Travis that she "pushed and bullied" Arthur to make him tough and self-sufficient, like her; however, she realizes that the tactic failed and made him even more weak-willed than his father.

He is married to Carmen (Allyn Ann McLerie), a sweet-natured woman who is almost as shy as he is: though they are happily married, their main problem is that they are so anxious to avoid hurting each other's feelings that they rarely tell each other what they really think. They have a son, Arthur Jr. (Sparky Marcus in the original series, Lightfield Lewis in the revival), whom they sent off to military school on Mama Carlson's advice; this proved to be a mistake when it turns "Little Arthur" into a nasty, racist, borderline fascist. In the first season, Carlson takes his son out of military school, to live with his parents and go to public school, but later references suggest that Little Arthur gets worse, not better; in one episode, it is revealed that Little Arthur wants to join the American branch of the Nazi Party, and in another, it's stated that he wants to join the PLO. Arthur Jr. returns in The New WKRP in Cincinnati, joining the station as an account executive; he has since abandoned his radical ways and become a petulant, spoiled yuppie who expects to be promoted to his father's job. Arthur Jr. is not seen after the first season of the revival. During the course of the series, Carmen has a surprise pregnancy and, after she and Arthur decide they want the baby, she gives birth to a daughter, whom she and Arthur hope they can raise their own way, without the mistakes they made with their son. The girl's name is later revealed to be Melanie in a subsequent episode; she does not appear in the revival.

Inspiration and casting

According to Jay Sandrich, director of the WKRP pilot, MTM Enterprises originally wanted Roddy McDowall to play Carlson. When McDowall was unavailable, Sandrich recommended Jump, who had just played a memorable role for Sandrich as the bumbling Police Chief Tinkler on the show Soap. Arthur Carlson was the first character to be cast, and subsequent roles auditioned by cold-reading a scene with Jump.

Carlson was a parody of Jerry Blum (c.1932–February 16, 2019), the President and General Manager of WQXI in Atlanta, Georgia, from 1960 to 1989. The turkey drop, in particular, was a much-exaggerated version of one of Blum's real stunts, when he attempted to drop turkeys off the back of a truck and caused a melee of people looking for a free turkey; Carlson's postmortem was lifted, with only slight alteration, from Blum's own reaction to his stunt. Whereas Carlson was weak and indecisive, Blum was in many ways the opposite, a brash and in-your-face personality (hence his nickname "Big Guy") frequently seen in oversized sunglasses and a buttoned-down leisure suit.