Herb Tarlek - Sales Manager Not So Extraordinaire

Sales Manager Not So Extraordinaire

Herb is the sales manager at radio station WKRP, having been with the station since 1964, but he is unable to get any major advertising agencies to buy time on the station, partly because of WKRP's poor ratings and partly because the advertising agency people loathe Herb personally. The clients Herb does get for the station are often disreputable or sleazy, like Shady Hills Rest Home, Gone With the Wind Estates, Ferryman Funeral Homes, and Dave Wickerman, whose "diet pills" turned out to be a legalized form of speed. Herb's most reliable advertising client is Red Wigglers (the "Cadillac of Worms"), though the owner of Red Wigglers, Harvey Green, pulled his commercials off WKRP after the Religious Right threatened a boycott of the station's advertisers ("a lot of religious people fish").

Herb's only real skill is knowing how to collect money from deadbeat clients, often by blackmailing them. He admits to program director Andy Travis that it took time to develop that skill, saying of one client: "He did that to me twenty times. Then I got smart." Herb also repeats this skill in The New WKRP in Cincinnati, where he bails rookie salesman Arthur Carlson, Jr. out of a ticket trade scam for a freak show operator. Though the contract legally binds the station to air the show's ads, Herb is released from the contract after he threatens to take legal action against the promoter, who has habitually left a string of unpaid debts to other radio stations.

Herb is best known for his atrocious taste in clothes. He always wears a white belt and white shoes; most of his suits are made of polyester and are covered in loud plaid patterns. He claims to get his suits in a golf pro shop in Kentucky; no one else makes his kind of clothes anymore due to anti-pollution laws. While Herb's co-workers mock his fashion sense ("Somewhere there's a Volkswagen without seat covers"), Herb claims that his suits put his clients at ease, conveying the message "trust me, sign my deal! I know what I'm doing." He is proven right in the episode "Changes", when he switches over to a tasteful wardrobe; his lowbrow clients don't trust someone with such a highbrow wardrobe, and Herb quickly returns to his old way of dressing.

Herb prefers personal luxury cars for what he believes is necessary for a job of his caliber. In the episode "Baby If You've Ever Wondered", he suggests an across-the-board raise (which he calculates by taking away Carlson's share of the station sales commissions). When he figures out the final sum, he tosses the calculator on his desk, declaring "Oh yes, we are definitely talking Cordoba!" This is realized in the subsequent episode "Real Families", where his car is indeed revealed to be a 1980 Chrysler Cordoba.

Herb sometimes tries to make money by doing other things on the side, like selling life insurance or running a numbers racket. He also collects kickbacks from his advertising clients and from the disc jockeys (for getting them endorsements and other outside work); in the pilot he boasts that "they don't call me 'Mr. Kickback' for nothing."

At WKRP, Herb is considered a troublemaker and "general jackass" by his co-workers, but they all have a certain grudging affection for him. Jennifer Marlowe intervenes on Herb's behalf on several occasions, both in personal matters (such as trying to convince Herb's wife to accept him back during a brief separation) and in his professional foul-ups (such as trying to save Herb's job by attempting to deceive a dissatisfied client, who ultimately turned out to be sympathetic). Venus Flytrap also saved Herb's job on one occasion; a jealous Herb had lied about a job offer he received, hoping to get the same response Venus got when he received an actual job offer. Venus used a counter-offer from Andy to get Herb his job back, telling Andy they were a "package deal" (and "soul brothers").

For all of his flaws, Herb also shows flashes of integrity and ingenuity. When he discovered that a diet pill he has sold advertising space for had resulted in a teenager being hospitalized, he immediately went on the air to denounce the product and announce that the station would no longer run their ads. In another instance, when Carlson pulled out of a planned series of musical ads for a funeral home, Herb remembered that the station still owned the rights to the jingle and he re-wrote the lyrics to fit an ad campaign for a local tire store.