Arthur Carlson

Arthur Carlson
WKRP in Cincinnati character
Portrayed by	Gordon Jump
Information
Aliases	The Big Guy
Gender	Male
Occupation	General Manager of WKRP
Nationality	American

Arthur Carlson, aka "The Big Guy" is a fictional character on the television situation comedy WKRP in Cincinnati (1978–82), the general manager of the low-rated Cincinnati radio station WKRP. The character was also a regular on the "revival" series, The New WKRP in Cincinnati (1991–93), still working as general manager of WKRP. He was played by Gordon Jump in both shows.

Mr. 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. 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 Mr. 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. With the rise of rock n' roll music, WKRP's "beautiful music" format became outdated and a sure money-loser, appealing only to senior citizens.

In the pilot of WKRP, the new program director, Andy Travis, convinces Mr. Carlson that switching the format to rock n' roll might make the station successful and profitable; Mr. 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.

Though he accepts the format change, Mr. 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, Mr. 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 Mr. Carlson, who feels guilty about having helped to promote the concert, will change their format back to "elevator music." But Mr. 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."

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