Remembering 2025’s Losses: Loni Anderson

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Happy new year, everyone! I hope your year is off to a calm and peaceful start. I was surprised that the fireworks weren’t going on and on and on the way they did last year…not that I’m complaining!! To kick off 2026, I’m looking back at people who left us in 2025. There’ll be two lists, one for music and one for other walks of life. Here we go. Loni Anderson There were a lot of what they called “T&A” shows in the 70s: mindless stuff that wasn’t funny but was watched because of the scantily-clad females. WKRP in Cincinnati wasn’t one of those, but they still had high male viewership because of Loni Anderson. WKRP turned sitcoms on their head, giving us the “sexy bombshell” as an intelligent individual who, if you watch closely enough, ran the station. She kept the inept Arthur Carlson, the manager, appearing to know what he was doing (he didn’t: he was general manager because his mother owned the station). WKRP was also unusual in that it could be serious. Since the show was set in Cincinnati, they had an episode (“In Concert”) about the tragedy at The Who concert at Riverfront Coliseum in December 1979. (That entire episode is on YouTube, and I encourage you to watch it if you’ve never seen it.) They also dealt with Venus Flytrap being an Army deserter during the Vietnam War. Oh, Loni Anderson was married to Burt Reynolds for four years, too. That’s hardly how I’ll remember her. She was part of a classic sitcom that, to paraphrase Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi,” most people didn’t realize was so good until it was gone. Her death, two days before her 80th birthday, leaves half the cast of that show (Gary Sandy, Jan Smithers, Tim Reid, and Richard Sanders [the oldest, at 85]) surviving. Thanks for the laughs, Loni. Loni Anderson Born Loni Kaye Anderson, August 5, 1945, Saint Paul, Minnesota Died August 3, 2025, Hollywood, California (uterine cancer) A clip of some of Johnny’s antics with Jennifer on WKRP: