Thanksgiving is all about Tradition, and down here in the CommLawBlog bunker we’re on board with that – so on board that we have decided to start our own tradition for our readers. Henceforth, we plan to honor the spirit of Thanksgiving annually by providing readers easy access to one of the most Thanksgiving-ish of all Thanksgiving cultural references: the “Turkeys Away” episode of WKRP in Cincinnati. (It first aired on October 30, 1978, but it seems like only yesterday.)
And lest anyone accuse us of going off-message here by veering CommLawBlog away from, like, real legal issues and over to cheap click bait tactics, let’s not forget: “Turkeys Away” was based on a for real radio promotion that went south. In other words, there’s a legitimate take-home lesson here for all our broadcast readers (or any other publicity-hungry operation with easy access to (a) a helicopter and (b) a bunch of live turkeys).
So, with our most sincere wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving to our readers, here’s a link to the complete “Turkeys Away” episode. And for those of you who just want to cut to the chase, we’re embedding below a five-minute clip that includes Les Nessman’s immortal description of the events and Arthur Carlson’s equally immortal explanation: “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf3mgmEdfwg