Q-SKY program director and morning DJ Jeff Dugan builds a large fanbase by assembling a group of charismatic on-air personalities playing popular rock and roll.

The major event of that sub-theme occurs when Jeff arranges to broadcast a live concert by Linda Ronstadt that is being sponsored by a competing radio station.

Rounding out the cast are Cleavon Little, who plays the Prince of Darkness, QSKY's overnight host (Little had previously played a disc jockey in the film Vanishing Point in 1971); Eileen Brennan as "Mother", the 40-something nighttime DJ; Alex Karras as "Doc Holiday", the midday DJ with the lowest ratings on the station who is eventually let go after the survey period; Cassie Yates as Laura Coe, who takes over Doc's midday slot; and Tom Tarpey as new sales manager Regis Lamar, the bane of the disc jockeys' existence.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that the film "turns into a preposterously self-serving variation on 1960s' themes" and that the central problem in the plot "is certainly a real one, for rock radio stations everywhere.

"[4] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 1.5 stars out of 4 and found "little reason to care" about the plot, as the sales manager "is a caricature that belongs on a TV variety show" and the "miserable deejays... do their best to make you want to switch stations.

"[7] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times declared it "Fairly Mediocre" and "such claptrap silliness that only the tender in years and soft in mind are apt to be enraptured.

"[8] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post panned the film as "a shallow attempt at rabble-rousing comedy" which "flounders in smarmy virtue" and "tries to be hip in all the worst ways.

"[9] John Pym of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that the movie's central premise rests on the idea "that commercial, pop-music radio stations were not primarily created to generate advertising revenue, and that the people who put on the records and ad-lib between the jingles are folk heroes, free from the exigencies of the business world, members of that select cinematic breed of American independent professionals.

Ezra Sacks' attenuated script, which alternates between episodes of jovial high jinks and moments of melancholy self-indulgence, fails to acknowledge the practical implications of this premise (namely that, without advertising, these 'creative' broadcasters would be out of work) and instead makes the army salesman a ludicrously over-drawn figure of fun and Regis Lamar a sycophantic yes-man.

"[10] Rolling Stone magazine considered the music heavily biased towards musicians who had been managed by Irving Azoff, who would become the head of the studio's then-corporate sibling MCA Records five years after the film's release.

The physical resemblance between Michael Brandon and WKRP lead actor Gary Sandy and the fact that their respective characters were both based upon KMET programming director Captain Mikey[13] may have contributed to this speculation.