“WKRP In Cincinnati” may be a slightly forgotten hit show from the ’80s, but the Thanksgiving episode “Turkeys Away” is fondly remembered by many viewers. The episode’s climax involves the radio station chucking live turkeys out of a helicopter as part of a Thanksgiving promotion. The result? Chaos and turkeys “hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement,” according to newsman Les Nessman (Richard Sanders).
As outrageous as the scene is, it’s actually based on a real radio promotion that also ended in disaster. Creator Hugh Wilson got many of his ideas from people who worked for WQXI in Atlanta. A salesperson at the station, Clarke Brown, told him about a turkey promotion that didn’t go well. “The turkey drop was actually a real incident. It was at a shopping center in Atlanta,” Brown told the Classic TV History Blog. “We thought that we could throw these live turkeys out into the crowd for their Thanksgiving dinners. All of us, naïve and uneducated, thought that turkeys could fly. Of course, they went just f***in’ splat.”
To make the story even more bizarre, Wilson and Brown don’t actually agree on all the details. In that same interview, Brown said the mode of transportation wasn’t really a helicopter. Wilson, meanwhile, claims the station manager at WQXI told him it most definitely was.
Turkeys Away ranks among the best Thanksgiving TV show episodes
The climax of “Turkey’s Away” catapulted “WKRP In Cincinnati” in the ratings — it’s hailed as one of the best sitcom episodes of all time. Tim Reid, who played Venus Flytrap on the show, said the cast knew they had comedy gold on their hands. “It was a great table read. We’d get the script a day or so before table read so you know going in whether or not you’ve got something that’s going to be a lot of fun to do,” Reid told the Classic TV History Blog. “We all just couldn’t wait to get there.”
Hugh Wilson said not only was the audience laughing hard, but so was the cast. “There’s probably some good outs [outtakes] from that where they just started laughing and we had to cut,” Wilson said in that same interview.
The only cast member not to crack was Richard Sanders, the actor who played Les Nessman, who was reporting live from the turkey drop. “He really was amazing,” Wilson said. “He could have the whole soundstage fall and he never broke character.” Sanders, who modeled the lines in the scene from the radio broadcast of the Hindenburg disaster, was the highlight of the episode for many cast members, including Tim Reid. “I mean, who takes on the Hindenburg and does a comedy?” Reid said in that same interview. “We went there.”
