Happy Thanksgiving. We hope you all had a great day despite everything that is going on. When it comes to Thanksgiving-themed TV episodes, there is one that stands out from all the rest. That episode is Turkeys Away from the first season of WKRP in Cincinnati in 1978.
WKRP General Manager, Arthur “Big Guy” Carlson, decides to do a Thanksgiving promotion that involves dropping 40 live turkeys from a helicopter over a shopping center. As you can imagine, it doesn’t go well and it is being covered live on the air by reporter Les Nessman. At the end of the show, Mr. Carlson covered in feathers says “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.” That may be the best remembered line from the entire show’s history.
The episode was inspired by a real-life event. Show creator Hugh Wilson was working at a top 40 radio station in Atlanta when he was told about a similar promotion that involved throwing live turkeys out of the back of a pickup truck. That proved messy as well!
