Les Nessman

Les Nessman
WKRP in Cincinnati character
Les Nessman and Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) in the studio
Portrayed by	Richard Sanders
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	radio news anchor/reporter
Nationality	American

Les Nessman (born approximately 1940) is a fictional character on the television situation comedy WKRP in Cincinnati (1978–82) played by Richard Sanders. He reprised his role in the sequel series, The New WKRP in Cincinnati.

Les was raised in Dayton by his mother and stepfather (who he thought was his biological father). He has been employed by WKRP since 1954, beginning as an office boy and cub reporter. In the episode "Secrets of Dayton Heights", he fails a security check for a press conference because his biological father had belonged to the Communist party. He is shocked, inasmuch as he himself is virulently anti-Communist, an attitude instilled in him by his embittered mother (also played by Sanders). He goes to visit Harvey Moorehouse, his biological father, working as a barber, and finds that he isn't such a bad guy, and that Moorehouse likely gave up his son to spare him the shame of his Communist activities. Les decides to continue to go to Moorehouse's barber shop in an effort to get to know his father, but does not choose to reveal to him that he is Moorehouse's son.

The slight, balding, bespectacled man always wears a bow tie (though he wore a standard necktie in the pilot episode) and always has a bandage somewhere on his person, a running gag that began with the actor's first appearance (when he actually needed it due to a backstage injury). Lines explaining the injury were written and then cut, and thereafter Les simply appeared each week with a new bandage and new unexplained injury. The producers explained that the gag was overlooked by audience members, who didn't remember that Les has a large dog named Phil at his home, and Les often lives in fear of being attacked, or bitten, thus requiring the use of the band-aids.

Les is the ludicrously incompetent news director of WKRP and has been with the station since 1954. Of the station's numerous cast members, Nessman's constant bungling, baseless pride and insistence on keeping his full-service trappings on the rock-oriented station generally poses the biggest obstacle to the station's success. Knowing very little about sports (or, for that matter, general news itself), he makes several glaring errors, for example mispronouncing golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez' name as "Chy Chy Rod-ri-gweeze", (even mispronouncing it a second time after Johnny corrects him) referring to chihuahuas as "chee-hooah-hooahs", and calling a women's swimming event "breast stroking." In at least one episode the viewer can hear the WKRP motto do a play on words about Les' incompetence: "WKRP, more news and Les Nessman."