22 Facts About Les Nessman

Les Nessman reprised his role in the sequel series, The New WKRP in Cincinnati.

Les Nessman has been employed by WKRP since 1954, beginning as an office boy and cub reporter.

Les Nessman is shocked, inasmuch as he himself is virulently anti-Communist, an attitude instilled in him by his embittered mother.

Les Nessman 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 alleged Communist activities.

Les Nessman decides to continue to go to Moorehouse's barber shop in an effort to get to know his father, but chooses not to reveal his identity to Moorehouse.

Lines explaining the injury were written and then cut, and thereafter Les Nessman 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 Nessman has a large dog named Phil at his home, and Les Nessman often lives in fear of being attacked or bitten, thus the need for the bandages.

Les Nessman is the ludicrously incompetent news director of WKRP and has been with the station since 1954.

Program director Andy Travis complains that Les Nessman completely missed one of the most important stories of 1979, the Iranian Revolution, because he focused on a human interest story about a pig that could do addition and subtraction.

Les Nessman's area of greatest expertise is agriculture; he is a five-time winner of the fictitious Ohio radio news trophy, the "Buckeye Newshawk Award", and has won the award an additional three times by the time of The New WKRP in Cincinnati.

Les Nessman has won the coveted "Silver Sow Award", and the "Copper Cob Award".

Several episodes of the series imply that Les Nessman was formerly promiscuous in his youth and unexpectedly accomplished in seducing women, with Les Nessman sincerely telling his coworkers that he "got tired" of one-night-stands.

The episode "Les Nessman' Groupie" explores the consequences of one such encounter evolving into a one-sided relationship, with Les Nessman expertly role-playing a faux lovers' spat with Jennifer.

Les Nessman is one of the station's oldest employees and frequently used to lampoon or draw attention to outdated stereotypes and prejudices, often acting as a minor antagonist to the other characters.

Les Nessman insistently refers to black DJ Venus Flytrap as "a negro" and expresses surprise and confusion when he fails to embody the stereotypes with which Les was raised.

Les Nessman is prominently featured in WKRP's most famous episode, "Turkeys Away", in which he reports on what turns into a disastrous station promotion, evoking Herbert Morrison's emotional description of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster.

When Bailey Quarters is promoted to on-air news reporter, Les Nessman is jealous enough to attempt to upstage her by plagiarizing an initial draft of one of her news stories, unaware that it is partially fictional and thus puts the station's broadcast license in jeopardy.

Les Nessman believes that as the news director, he should have his own private office, so he puts masking tape on the floor around his desk indicating where his office walls would be.

Les Nessman insists that anyone who approaches his desk must knock at an imaginary door and wait for permission to come in.

Les Nessman' initial chauvinistic resistance to Bailey working in the "man's world" of journalism, and his eventual acceptance of her as an equal was an important story arc that has been repeatedly noted as a significant reflection of changing gender roles during this time.

Les Nessman has made numerous "real life" appearances around the country.

Subsequent appearances by Sanders as Les Nessman included the 1997 Lexington, Kentucky, Christmas parade, during which he simulated a re-enactment of the famous "Turkeys Away" episode.