I don't know how I missed this anniversary albeit by one day.
A mere 43 years ago one of the funniest moments in the history of television took place. The premise of the November 22, 1978 episode of the popular sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati entitled Turkeys Away centered on a publicity stunt sponsored by the radio station in which live turkeys were to be dropped from a helicopter. There was only one glaring problem with dropping turkeys from a whirlybird ... turkeys can't fly. As the poor helpless birds began plummeting to earth the station's weather man Les Nessman is forced to do a live report from a nearby vantage point that parodied the May 6, 1937 radio broadcast by Herbert Morrison of the Hindenburg crash.
I'm pretty sure that a comedy skit about turkeys falling to their death wouldn't fly today but back in the 70s when people could separate fact from fiction and find humor in things it was hilarious. Obviously no real turkeys were harmed and actually no turkeys were shown at all. The skit was simply the view of Less Nessman standing in front of a store with a microphone describing what he saw. It was up to the viewer to envision what was happening from what Nessman was saying. That's why this skit worked so effectively. Had the viewer actually seen the carnage they would have probably been horrified.
Interestingly enough this episode was based on a real event.
From MeTV:
Many of the antics that viewers enjoyed on WKRP in Cincinnati were inspired by real events. In the seventh episode of the series, "Turkeys Away," Mr. Carlson conjures up an attention-grabbing Thanksgiving promotion. With the help of Herb and Les, he puts a spin on the classic turkey giveaway and makes the holiday one that won’t be forgotten — for decades to come. WKRP will drop 20 live turkeys from a helicopter.
An idea this original is hard to make up, and creator and co-writer Hugh Wilson insists that he didn’t have to — according to Wilson, this, too, happened in real life. In an interview with the Archive of American Television, he explained, "Jerry Blum, who was the general manager of WQXI [in Atlanta], told me that he had been fired from a Texas station for throwing turkeys out of a helicopter. I said to Jerry, 'You just won me an Emmy. That’s really funny.'"
Wilson's longtime friend Clarke Brown corroborates his story, fanning the flames of this wild holiday tale. In an interview with CBR.com, Brown said, "The turkey drop was actually a real incident. It was at a shopping center in Atlanta; I think it was Broadview Plaza, which no longer exists. It was a Thanksgiving promotion."
The intention was to share a little holiday cheer with the fans of the station, but there wasn’t much consideration given to the actual logistics of having livestock on hand. "We thought that we could throw these live turkeys out into the crowd for their Thanksgiving dinners," Brown admitted. "All of us, naïve and uneducated, thought that turkeys could fly. Of course, they just went…splat."
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