"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!!!"
-- Arthur Carlson, WKRP in Cincinnati

The above quote is from the famous "WKRP in Cincinnati" episode where Station Manager, Arthur Carlson (played by Gordon Jump), arranged to have live turkeys dropped from a helicopter as an advertising stunt.

Oddly enough, this famous WKRP episode was loosely based on a real event! Back in 1946 (some sources say 1945), Yellville, Arkansas inaugurated the "Turkey Trot Festival" which included a wild turkey calling contest, a turkey target shoot, a Miss Drumsticks Pageant and oh yeah: a live turkey release from the roof of the courthouse. After a few years, someone thought it might be fun to actually toss the poor gobblers out of a low-flying airplane for the event. This repeated for a number of years until 1989 when a national animal-rights protest cast the event in a bad light and the "National Enquirer" splashed a photo of the event across the nation forcing promoters to abandon the turkey drop.

Sometimes, real life is funnier - or plain stranger - than anything you can make up.

http://radio.about.com/library/weekly/aa112002a.htm

http://www.made2mentor.com/Images/wkrp_turkey.jpg

This was one of the funniest TV episodes I've ever seen! And the genius of the episode is that we never actually get to see the turkeys drop. We only get to listen to Les Nessman's hilariously brilliant description of the event and see the shocked reactions of the rest of the staff back at the station as they also listen to Les. Brilliant performances by the entire cast make this arrangement work like a charm. The fact that this episode was inspired by actual events just adds to its charm!

Yeah, I remember reading about that a few years ago.:cool:

I watched this episode last night on DVD. Then I watched again with commentary. Hugh Wilson mentioned a couple of times in the commentary that this episode was based on actual events.

I actually had never heard that before. This was my favorite episode, and Idk how, but now I like it even better. I wish there was a way that I could have been there when they were actually doing all of this. It would have been strange, but it definitely would be something to see.