Turkeys Away: WKRP's legendary Thanksgiving episode.

0:03 Calarogus Shark Media, Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to TV in the Basement, I'm Journey Joe Mitchell and Today, let's revisit one of the all time greatest sitcom episodes. Plenty of beloved TV comedies have great Thanksgiving episodes. The episode of Cheers that devolves into a food fight is an all timer, but the most quintessential, uproarious Thanksgiving episode of a sitcom remains Turkeys Away, the WKRP and Cincinnati masterpiece of bird dropping pandemonium that first aired in nineteen seventy eight. For those who have not seen it, Turkeys Away starts off with a straightforward plot that carenes abruptly into dark comedy. Mister Carlson, who runs the station owned by his wealthy, domineering mother, decides he needs to get more involved in day to day operations and comes up with an idea for a publicity stunt that will shine more attention on WKRP, which is re simply changed formats from easy listening to rock. But he keeps the details of his plan a secret from his employees, with the exception of Herb Tarlik Frank Bonner. The Skeezy ad sales guy who becomes his right hand man in this Thanksgiving fiasco, as his taste in leisure suits attests Herb's judgment is no better than Carlson's. In the episode's second act, as WKRP newsman list nessman Richard Sanders broadcasts live from the Pinedale Mall, what mister Carlson has done becomes clear in real time. Mister Carlson has chosen to drop twenty live turkeys from a helicopter with a happy Thanksgiving

1:36 from WKRP banner attached to it, above a busy shopping center parking lot. This does not go well. The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement less shouts, while bystanders can be seen fleeing around him When his feed cuts out during the mayhem, Johnny Fever, the disc jockey running the boards back in the studio, segues back to the music with a rye perfectly delivered thanks for that on the spot report les for those who just tuned in, the Pinedale Shopping Mall has just been bombed with live turkeys. There are a number of amazing things about this whole sequence, but I'll start with this. It's actually based on a true story. According to this oral history of Turkeys Away, not just one true story, but two. Hugh Wilson, the WKRP creator, said he based the plot on a similar promotion spearheaded by a station in Dallas, while staffers at the Atlanta station on which WKRP was based said they also once threw turkeys out of the back of a truck in a promotion that shocker went awry. The fact that two radio stations, and those are just the ones we know about, actually executed some version of a live turkey drop lends this episode credibility. But what makes it funny is how incredible it is. It's also funny because it does such a masterful job of withholding information. Because mister Carlson is so insistent on handling the promotion himself, the reveal that his grand scheme involves shoving turkeys out of an aircraft comes as a shock when we share with poor Less as he narrates the entire thing,

3:08 not to mention Johnny program director Andy Travis, Gary Sandy, DJ Venus, Flytrap, Tim Reid, and staffer Bailey quarters Jan Smithers, all of whom are listening in horror back at the station. Observing their reactions to Less's report heightens our own response. We're not just watching these characters, We're sharing in their baffled amusement. Crucially, we never actually see a helicopter or any turkeys hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement. The entire picture of this scene is painted through Less's words and tone, which escalate quickly from calm and newsman like to absolutely panic stricken. This is necessary for obvious reasons. It would have been problematic from an animal rights perspective, not to mention prohibitively expensive for a network sitcom to stage this scene, but it works better without us witnessing what happens, as we would if we were listening to Les on the actual radio. We are guided through this story primarily by Sanders's vocal expression. A deeper look at the real life inspiration for this story. One version ties it back to nineteen seventy one, where during the Hull Centennial Queen Contest, KHMO Farm director Dick mccargue found himself with some spare time to fill before the crowning of the Queen. To entertain the crowd, he shared an intriguing story.

4:29 The tale he recounted harked back to a radio station in Decatur, Illinois, which had an audacious idea for a Thanksgiving promotion at a local shopping center. The plan was to drop turkeys from an airplane, assuming that these domesticated birds would gracefully take flight and safely land. However, there was one significant issue. Domesticated turkeys are not known for their flying abilities. As a result, these hapless turkeys plummeted from the sky, landing in the shopping center's parking lot, smashing through windshields and even crashing into the roofs of nearby houses. Despite that tale, the creators of WKARP revealed in an interview that this memorable episode drew inspiration from a real life Thanksgiving promotion that occurred at a shopping center in Atlanta. Some quick trivia. When aired in syndication, mister Carlson comes into the radio booth with an unknown song playing in the background. The unknown song features the sound of dogs barking. When WKRP originally aired, the song playing in the background was Pink Floyd's Dogs. Due to licensing issues, the Pink Floyd's song was removed after the original air date, and even though the episode features turkeys, all Things Thanksgiving, and more. It actually came out before Halloween. Its original air date was October thirtieth, nineteen seventy eight. Following the broadcast of Turkeys Away, numerous radio stations across the nation adopted a similar Thanksgiving promotion as the one showcased in the show. These radio states began offering

6:00 coupons and certificates to their listeners, allowing them to collect a turkey from their nearby supermarkets as part of the promotion. It's important to note that these were not live turkeys. Richard Sanders, renowned for his role as les Nessman, frequently received compensation for making live appearances and broadcasting the event as less Nessman. Enjoy your holiday and I hope you get to binge watch some shows. I'm Journey Joe Mitchell and until next time, I'll be watching TV in the basement.