Oscar hopefuls including Jessie Buckley and Timothée Chalamet gather for luncheon and class picture

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Nearly all of the 230 people up for Oscars across 24 categories gathered Tuesday for the Academy Award nominees luncheon, an event that functions as a celebration, group portrait session and orientation for next month's big ceremony.

Nominees including Jessie Buckley, Timothée Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio and Emma Stone sat for lunch and stood for a class photo alongside nominees for awards including best animated short and the newly created casting Oscar.

The ballroom at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, was especially full of nominees for “Sinners,” the most nominated film of all time, including star Michael B. Jordan and director Ryan Coogler.

Lynette Howell Taylor, elected in July as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, made her first address to Oscar nominees, and gave them a set of instructions on how to handle their acceptance speeches if they win.

“Be prepared,” she said. “Don’t say you didn’t expect it. You have a one in five chance of winning.”

She urged winners to “make it heartfelt,” not to try to thank everyone they can think of, pick one person to speak for a group of victors and hold speeches to 45 seconds.

The luncheon is a relatively egalitarian affair where big names mix with small ones and veteran nominees stand for photos with first-timers.

Craig Renaud, nominated for best documentary short for “Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud,” got to chat with DiCaprio, up for best actor for “One Battle After Another,” at the tables before the group photo.

Nearby, Mohammaddreza Eyni, co-director with Sara Khaki of documentary feature nominee “Cutting Through Rocks,” talked about his film with Ethan Hawke, nominated for best actor for “Blue Moon.”

The roll call where every nominee in attendance is summoned to the stage, is the centerpiece of the gathering. It feels much like the names being read off at a high school graduation. (Nominees even get a certificate on departure that looks like a diploma. “Woo-hoo!” best supporting actress nominee Elle Fanning said when handed hers on her way out, and asked for a photo with it.)

This year's roll call, read by actor and Academy Board of Governors member Lou Diamond Phillips, began with Delroy Lindo, up for best supporting actor for “Sinners,” and ended with Teyana Taylor, up for best supporting actress for its biggest competitor, “One Battle After Another.”

The luncheon was a return to tradition after last year's was called off because it fell amid Southern California's destructive wildfires. A cocktail reception with the class picture just a few days before the ceremony replaced it.

There were many happy meetings among nominees as they arrived. Steven Spielberg, nominated for best picture as a producer of “Hamnet,” chatted in the lobby with “One Battle” best director nominee Paul Thomas Anderson. Spielberg took a photo of Anderson leaning on an Oscar statue.

Chloé Zhao, up for her second best director Oscar for “Hamnet,” hugged former academy president Janet Yang.

Jacob Elordi, who stands 6-foot-5, embraced the nearly as tall director of Sirât, Oliver Laxe, near the entrance and attracted the attention of most of the cameras in the room. Elordi is up for best supporting actor for “Frankenstein” and “Sirât” is up for best international feature.

Academy members from 88 countries voted for the nominees, Howell said proudly during her speech, and every category had at least one international nominee.

Emma Stone, left, and Yorgos Lanthimos arrive at the 98th Academy Awards Oscar nominees luncheon on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Timothee Chalamet arrives at the 98th Academy Awards Oscar nominees luncheon on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Sev Ohanian, from left, Ryan Coogler, Zinzi Evans, Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo, and Miles Caton arrive at the 98th Academy Awards Oscar nominees luncheon on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Teyana Taylor arrives at the 98th Academy Awards Oscar nominees luncheon on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Jessie Buckley arrives at the 98th Academy Awards Oscar nominees luncheon on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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.”

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 in McIntire’s basement.

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.

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 — WKRPTV and WKRPDT — 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.”

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)