Howard Hesseman dead at 81

[KevShmev]

As a tribute:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPABesa7wcE

R.I.P.

[Cool Chris]

My favorite Dr. Fever moments: 1) When they had the cop in the studio to show the effects of drinking, and his reflexes got better the more he drank; 2) The name-the-song contest they tried to make too hard so no one could win, and his facial expressions when the caller named each song correctly.

I remember watching Head of the Class a bit but don't have specific memories from it.

[El Barto]

That's too bad. WKRP is one of my very favorite sitcoms. I'll still fire it up from time to time.

My favorite Dr. Fever moments: 1) When they had the cop in the studio to show the effects of drinking, and his reflexes got better the more he drank;

That whole episode was great. Hard to pick a favorite, honestly. When he smashed the telephone and fled to escape the phone cops before the bomb went off is certainly a winner. I liked him as the snooty investor when he and Bailey scammed the sleazy photographer.

[Cool Chris]

I loved when the guys tried to break in to that photo studio.

[pg1067]

I need to go back and re-watch WKRP.  I watched Head of the Class also.  HH had about a dozen years when he was one of the funniest comedic actors on TV, but I don't think I've seen anything he did in the last 30 years.

[T-ski]

WKRP is one of the greatest shows of all time, it made me want to get into broadcasting.

Dr. Johnny Fever is iconic.

RIP.

[Stadler]

I remember WKRP being a great show.  I haven't seen it recently enough to know if it WAS a great show.  I might check it out.  I like revisiting those shows once in a while.   You can't always go back, but sometimes you can.

[El Barto]

I remember WKRP being a great show.  I haven't seen it recently enough to know if it WAS a great show.  I might check it out.  I like revisiting those shows once in a while.   You can't always go back, but sometimes you can.

It was.

Fun fact: Starting [I think] season 2 there was a gold record on the wall of the bullpen. That was an actual gold record presented to them by Chrysalis for Blondie's Heart of Glass. The label credited the show with making the song so popular.

[jingle.boy]

I remember WKRP being a great show.  I haven't seen it recently enough to know if it WAS a great show.  I might check it out.  I like revisiting those shows once in a while.   You can't always go back, but sometimes you can.

This.  Johnny Fever was one of the best sitcom characters of all time.

[hefdaddy42]

RIP to the Doctor Johnny Fever.

[hunnus2000]

One of the more underrated comedies ever! Great characters all around.

RIP Johnny Fever.

Oh - and BOOOOGER!!!! 

[Orbert]

I remember WKRP being a great show.  I haven't seen it recently enough to know if it WAS a great show.  I might check it out.  I like revisiting those shows once in a while.   You can't always go back, but sometimes you can.

In this case, you really can't.  I rented Season One of WKRP on DVD once, years ago, and was bummed to discovered that a lot (possibly most) of the music used in the original television broadcasts was not carried over to the DVDs.  Apparently licensing for TV is a separate thing from licensing for home video, and it would have been very time-consuming and very expensive to secure rights to use all of that music.  This means that all of those great jokes, and often just the atmosphere of the scene, provided by real 70's songs were replaced by "generic rock music".  Some jokes didn't make any sense, and sometimes they just cut scenes out.

R.I.P., Dr. Johnny Fever

[El Barto]

I remember WKRP being a great show.  I haven't seen it recently enough to know if it WAS a great show.  I might check it out.  I like revisiting those shows once in a while.   You can't always go back, but sometimes you can.

In this case, you really can't.  I rented Season One of WKRP on DVD once, years ago, and was bummed to discovered that a lot (possibly most) of the music used in the original television broadcasts was not carried over to the DVDs.  Apparently licensing for TV is a separate thing from licensing for home video, and it would have been very time-consuming and very expensive to secure rights to use all of that music.  This means that all of those great jokes, and often just the atmosphere of the scene, provided by real 70's songs were replaced by "generic rock music".  Some jokes didn't make any sense, and sometimes they just cut scenes out.

R.I.P., Dr. Johnny Fever

That was a big problem. For the most part we've been limited to old VHS rips. However, a few years back some outfit called Laugh Factory remastered the originals for DVD and included about 90% of the original music. It's pretty rare for me to notice that the music was off. It also includes scenes that were cut for syndication, a couple of which have been great. As well as a far more depressing ending to The Contest that Nobody Could Win, that they were right to re-shoot.

The one time I noticed that they weren't using original music was Dogs, from the clip Kev posted in the OP. Their approach was to have some band play something as close to Dogs as humanly possible while still being just different enough to not get sued. It was actually an interesting approach and pretty well done.

[Orbert]

I specifically remembered the Dogs scene from the original broadcast.  Laughed my ass off.  My dad and sister were watching it with me, and didn't get it.  Or they probably could have, but they were too busy being weirded out by the song itself.

I hadn't heard about the originals getting redone though.  I might check that out, someday.