RALEIGH, N.C. -- If you’re of a certain age, the call letters WKRP may bring to mind the heyday of Top 40 radio, DJs Dr. Johnny Fever and Venus Flytrap or perhaps Thanksgiving turkeys falling from the sky.

What you probably don’t think of is Raleigh, North Carolina.

And yet since 2015, radio station WKRP-LP has broadcast from a tower in North Raleigh at 101.9 on the FM dial. The call sign, inspired by the 1970s sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati,” was awarded by dumb luck to the station’s nonprofit owner, Oak City Media.

Now the people behind Oak City Media are moving in a new direction and to help finance their future ventures they’re looking to sell their most valuable asset.

“We determined that the best course of action was to monetize the WKRP call sign as best we could,” said D.P. McIntire, Oak City’s executive director. “And that is where this ‘auction’ comes into play.”

WKRP-LP is what’s known as a low-power station; at just 100 watts, the signal can reach anywhere from 4 to 10 miles from the tower off Buffalo Road, depending on terrain and obstacles such as buildings.

Oak City eventually intends to sell its broadcast license to another Triangle nonprofit. Its members have created a new nonprofit, IBC, that will help community groups and others across the country create their own low-power stations, McIntire said.

The proceeds from the WRKP auction will go to IBC, he said.

“We’re not going to be making any money off of this,” he said. “We’re going to take what we have built and use it to help others. That’s the goal.”

Oak City posted notice of its intent to sell WKRP early this month through various industry outlets and set a deadline of March 15 for initial bids. McIntire won’t disclose how many offers it received, other than to say it’s in the double digits and far exceeded their expectations.

The nonprofit will actually sell several WKRPs, one each for AM and FM radio stations as well as broadcast and digital TV.

“One of them we want to be in Cincinnati,” McIntire said. “And in fact, in all likelihood one of them is going to be in Cincinnati.”

The top three bidders in each category have been given an opportunity to increase their offer before the winners are announced in April.

How Oak City came by WKRP

The Federal Communications Commission informed Oak City Media that it could go ahead with its station on St. Patrick’s Day in 2014. McIntire called the next morning to work out the details, and the woman on the other end asked if the group had any call letters in mind. They had two that their research showed were not being used elsewhere.

“I rattled those two off right away. And the lady I was speaking with said, ‘I have to have three,’” McIntire said. “And I jokingly said, ‘Well, if WKRP is available, we’ll take that first.’ And she put me on hold, and 90 seconds later she gets back on the line and says, ‘Congratulations, Mr. McIntire, you’re the general manager of WKRP-LP Raleigh.’”

McIntire said the call letters had been owned by a company with several TV stations, and it was in the process of moving them from one station to another when Oak City Media’s request came in. The company threatened to sue, but Oak City kept the famous name.

McIntire, who grew up in Hilliard, Ohio, about two hours from Cincinnati, later learned from his mother that it had been a lifelong dream of his to run a radio station named WKRP. She told him he said as much at age 9 after watching the first episode of “WKRP in Cincinnati.”

WKRP-LP’s format is eclectic. The station started with a library of 10,000 songs and aims to play music that’s popular but not being played elsewhere. It has shows devoted to the 1970s, 1980s and the 1990s, and one on Saturday nights featuring only songs that made it to No. 1 on the Billboard charts.

One of the station’s signature offerings is “Weird Al and Friends,” two hours of novelty songs aimed at kids and their parents driving them home from school.

All of that is likely to disappear when the station finds a new owner, after the WKRP auction. Whoever obtains Oak City’s broadcast license will not keep the call letters, McIntire said.

“We have the feeling that it’s best for whomever assumes control of the license to do it their own way, and that includes the branding,” he said. “So it’s going to be a shame to see it go in a way, but it will be a bon voyage when we do.”

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