BOISE, Idaho--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 4, 2026--
Albertsons ® Companies, Inc. (NYSE: ACI) today announced the launch of Celebrations, a new digital destination designed to make planning life’s special moments easier, faster and more inspiring. Available across Albertsons Cos. websites and apps including Albertsons, Safeway, ACME, Shaw’s, Jewel-Osco, Randalls, Vons and Tom Thumb, Celebrations brings together what customers need for birthdays, baby showers, bridal events, seasonal holidays and more.
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From Valentine’s Day and the Big Game to Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and graduation, Celebrations helps make every gathering effortless and memorable. Photo Courtesy: Albertsons Companies
From elegant florals to whimsical cakes and themed décor, Celebrations makes it simple to bring any vision to life. Photo Courtesy: Albertsons Companies
With Celebrations, customers can explore curated party inspiration, personalize every detail and check out in minutes. Photo Courtesy: Albertsons Companies
Celebrations brings together what customers need for birthdays, baby showers, bridal events, seasonal holidays and more. Photo Courtesy: Albertsons Companies
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260204757270/en/
“At Albertsons Cos., we’re committed to making it easier for customers to bring the joy of food to every occasion,” said Jill Pavlovich, SVP of Digital Customer Experience at Albertsons Cos. “Celebrations puts essentials in one place, making planning and shopping more convenient, more personal and delightfully effortless for millions of shoppers.”
From Inspiration to Celebration in Minutes
With Celebrations, customers can explore curated party inspiration, personalize every detail and check out in minutes. From elegant florals to whimsical cakes and themed décor, Celebrations makes it simple to bring any vision to life. Additionally, the Albertsons AI shopping assistant can guide customers through the experience and provide personalized recommendations.
What’s Inside Celebrations?
Celebrations recognizes that modern event planning happens in the margins, between school pickups, work meetings and daily responsibilities. The platform enables customers to browse inspiration during coffee breaks, finalize orders during lunch hours and adjust details on the go, all while maintaining the high-quality standards they expect from their trusted Albertsons Cos. grocer. From Valentine’s Day and the Big Game to Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and graduation, Celebrations helps make every gathering effortless and memorable.
“We’re enhancing the shopping experience for our customers by adding the capability to plan entire celebrations with the same ease as ordering their weekly groceries. This integration is what makes Celebrations truly innovative,” Pavlovich explained.
Customers can start planning their special event today by visiting their local Albertsons Cos. app or website and navigating to Celebrations/Moments that matter under the “Shop more” tab. Because every moment deserves to be celebrated.
To download high-res images, click here.
About Albertsons Companies
Albertsons Companies is a leading food and drug retailer in the United States. As of Nov. 29, 2025, the Company operated 2,243 retail stores with 1,708 in-store pharmacies, 404 associated fuel centers, 22 dedicated distribution centers and 19 manufacturing facilities. The Company operates stores across 35 states and the District of Columbia under 22 well known banners including Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's, ACME, Tom Thumb, Randalls, United Supermarkets, Pavilions, Star Market, Haggen, Carrs, Kings Food Markets and Balducci's Food Lovers Market. The Company is committed to helping people across the country live better lives by making a meaningful difference, neighborhood by neighborhood. In 2024, along with the Albertsons Companies Foundation, the Company contributed more than $435 million in food and financial support, including more than $40 million through our Nourishing Neighbors Program to ensure those living in our communities and those impacted by disasters have enough to eat.
Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Tom Thumb, Randalls, United Supermarkets, Pavilions, Haggen and Balducci's Food Lovers Market are registered trademarks of Albertsons Companies Inc. or its subsidiaries. ACME, Carrs, Kings Food Markets, Shaw's, and Star Market are trademarks of Albertsons Companies Inc. or its subsidiaries. Albertsons associated logos, product names and services are trademarks of Albertsons Companies, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
From Valentine’s Day and the Big Game to Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and graduation, Celebrations helps make every gathering effortless and memorable. Photo Courtesy: Albertsons Companies
From elegant florals to whimsical cakes and themed décor, Celebrations makes it simple to bring any vision to life. Photo Courtesy: Albertsons Companies
With Celebrations, customers can explore curated party inspiration, personalize every detail and check out in minutes. Photo Courtesy: Albertsons Companies
Celebrations brings together what customers need for birthdays, baby showers, bridal events, seasonal holidays and more. Photo Courtesy: Albertsons Companies
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Hold on to those Thanksgiving turkeys! WKRP is coming to Cincinnati — for real this time.
“I cannot, by contract, tell you when. I cannot tell you who. But I can tell you, direct to the camera, WKRP, after 48 years, is coming to Cincinnati,” D.P. McIntire, who runs the media nonprofit that is auctioning the famous call letters, told The Associated Press. “Book it! It’s done!”
The call sign was made famous by “WKRP in Cincinnati,” a CBS television sitcom that ran from 1978 to 1982. It made stars of actors like Loni Anderson and Richard Sanders, whose bumbling newsman Les Nessman reported on a Thanksgiving promotion gone bad when live but flightless turkeys were dropped from a helicopter.
McIntire remembers watching the show’s first episode — featuring disc jockeys Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) — in the living room with his parents and older sister.
“And at the end of the 30-minute episode,” he said, “I got up and I proclaimed, `I’m going to be in radio. And if I ever have the opportunity, I’m going to run a station called WKRP.’”
McIntire said he got his first on-air job at 13 as a news anchor at WNQQ “Wink FM” in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.
Fast forward to 2014, when his North Carolina-based nonprofit acquired the call sign from the Federal Communications Commission. Stations in Dallas, Georgia, and Alexandria, Tennessee, previously bore the letters.
McIntire laughs as he recalls his chat with a woman in the agency’s audio division.
He had two sets of call letters in mind. She told him he needed a third.
“Being the jokester that I am, I said, `Well, if you need three, and if it’s available, we’ll take WKRP,’” he said. “And 90 seconds later, she came back and she said, `Mr. McIntire. Congratulations. You’re the general manager of WKRP in Raleigh, North Carolina.’”
WKRP-LP — 101.9 on the FM dial — went live Nov. 30, 2015. The LP stands for “low power,” a class of station created to serve more local audiences that didn’t want mass-market content.
“Our format is what radio used to be 35 years ago in small-town America,” he said. "There is Greats of the ‘80s, Sounds of the ’70s, '90s Rewind," as well as local news and “specialty programming.”
LPFM is restricted to nonprofit organizations like his Oak City Media, and it’s definitely local.
“Your broadcast capacity is limited to 100 watts,” McIntire said. “So, your average range is between, depending on your terrain and circumstances, 4 and 12 miles (6 and 19 kilometers) in any direction. Enough to cover a small town.”
And, by necessity, it’s a low-budget affair.
The transmitter is in a corner of McIntire’s garage, between a recycling bin and the cleaning supplies. The broadcast antenna sits atop a 25-foot (7.62-meter) metal flagpole in the backyard. The studio — microphones and a mixing board hooked up to a computer — is on the first floor of McIntire’s home.
Like the WKRP of television, McIntire and his partners set out to be “irreverent.” One of their offerings is a two-hour show called “Weird Al and Friends,” focusing on the satirical works of Weird Al Yankovic.
They even had an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. But don’t call the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — they hand out gift certificates to a local grocery store.
“We don’t toss them out of helicopters,” he said with a laugh.
This news comes hot on the heels of the decision to shutter CBS News Radio after nearly a century in operation. After more than a decade on the air, the 56-year-old McIntire decided it was time to pass the reins.
“We’re in a position where the older members like me who started the station are turning the leadership over to younger members,” he said. “They’re not interested in radio.”
They put out a call for bids to use the call letters on FM and AM radio, as well as television and digital television.
They intend to use the proceeds for a new nonprofit venture called Independent Broadcast Consultants. He said IBC will be “geared specifically toward helping these new broadcasters get up and running, get the consulting that they need in order to be, hopefully, more successful than we have been.”
Oak City Media was all set to hand off the television-related suffixes — WKRP-TV and WKRP-DT — when another group defaulted on the agreement, McIntire said. But he said the Cincinnati deal is in the bag, he just can’t legally discuss it.
“It will be radio,” he said. “But that’s all I can tell you at this time.”
Robert Thompson, who uses a season 2 episode of “WKRP” in his TV history class at Syracuse University, said it’s telling that people see real value in a fictional station whose call letters invoke the word “crap.”
“The value comes from the love of the characters for each other,” he said. “And now by buying this thing, the value comes from our love of the characters themselves.”
Whatever they do with the call sign, McIntire hopes they will be true to the show that inspired it.
“It has a special place in the hearts of an awful lot of people,” he said. “And we have been very, very, very proud to have been a steward of that legacy.”
This story has been updated to correct that the studio is on the first floor of the home, not the basement.
D.P. McIntire leans against a deck beneath the WKRP radio antenna in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
D.P. McIntire points to the transmitter for WKRP radio in a corner of his garage in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
The WKRP radio antenna sits atop a 25-foot flagpole behind D.P. McIntire's home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
A photo of the cast members of the sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati" sits in a window at the home of D.P. McIntire in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
D.P. McIntire stands beneath a WKRP banner in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
