October 30, 1978: "Turkeys Away" on "WKRP in Cincinnati"

Left to right: Gordon Jump, Frank Bonner, Gary Sandy

October 30, 1978: WKRP in Cincinnati airs the episode "Turkeys Away." Why they aired a Thanksgiving-themed episode on the night before Halloween, I don't know.

The situation comedy, which had debuted on CBS on September 16, was created by Hugh Wilson (who also wrote the opening theme song, sung by Steve Carlisle, and directed the Police Academy movies), and was based upon his experiences working in advertising sales at an Atlanta Top 40 station, with the Gary Sandy character of Andy Travis based on himself. (This was before the country singer Randy Travis became famous.)

Andy has been hired to revitalize a struggling AM radio station, by its general manager, Arthur Carlson (played by Gordon Jump), known to the station's smarmy advertising director, Herb Tarlek (Frank Bonner), as "Big Guy." As program director, Andy changed the station's format from what had been known as "beautiful music" (or, to its detractors, "elevator music") to rock and roll -- to the great dismay of the station's actual owner, Carlson's fabulously wealthy and incredibly stodgy mother Lillian, a.k.a. "Mama Carlson" (Sylvia Sidney in the pilot, Carol Bruce thereafter).

She really messed Arthur up: Her domineering way of raising him left him indecisive, and, while reasonably intelligent, and certainly good-natured, was as unsuited to running a big-city radio station in the rock and roll era as M*A*S*H's Henry Blake, a good doctor, had been to running an Army hospital during a war. This was emphasized in the show's 2nd season, when, in an episode built around a real life concert tragedy in Cincinnati, he mentioned that he'd never been to a rock concert before, and, then, in the aftermath, not yet knowing about the tragedy, told his employees he was amazed at the energy of it.

The fact that he always wore three-piece suits and had a wood-paneled office deepened this impression of hopeless squareness. So he heavily depended on Andy, Herb, and the station's receptionist, the surprisingly smart blonde bombshell Jennifer Marlowe (Loni Anderson), whom Herb constantly hits on, to no avail.

The news director is Les Nessman (Richard Sanders). He was the kind of man that made Mark Twain say, 100 years earlier, "When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati, because it's always 20 years behind the times." Les is not a good journalist, but he has perfect diction (which matters for radio), he dresses neatly (which doesn't), and he is enthusiastic about delivering the farm reports (which matters for the Midwest). There are no offices, except for Arthur's. But, in the bullpen where everyone has their desks, Les has put masking tape around his desk, to simulate an office, and insists that visitors knock on an imaginary door before he says, "Come in."

If Arthur is a square, then Les is so square, he's a cube. Les is Mama Carlson's kind of guy. The disc jockeys are not. Les and Herb refer to themselves and Mr. Carlson as "the suits," and to Andy and the rest as "the dungarees." One of "the dungarees" was Bailey Quarters (Jan Smithers), originally in charge of billing, but, with a journalism degree, she becomes an on-air reporter, and turns out to be better than Les. Les is smart enough to know it, behind the times enough to hate it, but enough of a gentleman to treat her well.

While some of the other deejays are mentioned, two are featured on the show. John Caravella (Howard Hesseman) is the morning host, a rocker using the stage name Dr. Johnny Fever. Along with Anderson's Jennifer, he became the show's breakout character. Gordon Sims (Tim Reid) is the smooth-talking, soulful evening DJ, using the name Venus Flytrap. Despite being at the opposite end of the day as Johnny, they are often seen together. Despite their racial and stylistic differences, they are close friends, and sometimes broadcast together.

Not seen often are Arthur's wife Carmen (Allyn Ann McLerie), their son Arthur Jr. (Sparky Marcus), and Herb's wife Lucille (Edie McClurg) and their children Herb III (N.P. Schoch) and Bunny (Stacy Heather Tolkin).

The show didn't start off with good ratings, but, as with policemen and ABC's Barney Miller, real-life radio business people spread the word that WKRP was the 1st TV show that told about what their business was really like.

"Turkeys Away," the 7th episode, is the episode that really got people to watch. Mr. Carlson wants to be more involved in promoting the station. So he and Herb come up with what they think is a great idea for Thanksgiving Day. They have Les do a live report from a local shopping center, not knowing what he's going to be reporting on. They have set things up with the shopping center's manager, and a helicopter hovers overhead. Arthur and Herb are inside, and they begin dropping turkeys out.

Not frozen turkeys, for free, which would get those who got to them to be grateful to the station and listen to them. Live turkeys. Spoiler alert: Wild turkeys can fly, but domesticated, farm-produced turkeys, bred for human consumption and loaded with fat, can't. (Even if they had dropped wrapped-up frozen turkeys out, they would have bruised upon landing, and probably wouldn't have been edible.)

And so, the live turkeys went splat on the asphalt of the parking lot. Except for those who got sucked into the copter's rotor, spreading feathers and giblets everywhere. Shocked at all this, Les uses Herbert Morrison's line from the Hindenburg disaster broadcast of 41 years earlier, which he would have been old enough to remember: "Oh, the humanity!"

Richard Sanders as Les Nessman

Back at the station, "the dungarees" are listening, and there's little they can say, and nothing they can do. When Arthur and Herb return, covered in feathers -- a 1970s sitcom didn't dare show them with blood and guts on them -- there's little they can say, either. Finally, the Big Guy says, "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!"

The show lasted for 5 years, and is still fondly remembered. A sequel series, The New WKRP in Cincinnati, ran in syndication from 1991 to 1993. It featured some of the original characters, while the others were each brought back as guest stars at least once.

Cincinnati did have, and still has, a radio and a TV station with the call letters WKRC. CBS owns it now, but didn't when WKRP was running. (WKRC's AM frequency is 550.) In 2008, an unrelated independent TV station in Cincinnati, WBQC-LD, took advantage of local nostalgia for the sitcom, promoting its conversion to digital broadcasting by rebranding as "WKRP-TV in Cincinnati."

After WKRP was canceled, Gordon Jump went against type, and played a child molester on a "very special" two-part episode of Diff'rent Strokes, replaced Jesse White as the "lonely" repairman in commercials for Maytag dishwashers, and returned to star on The New WKRP. He died in 2003.

Frank Bonner played, of all things, a priest, teaching at a Catholic high school on New York's Long Island, on the sitcom Just the Ten of Us. He was part of the main cast of The New WKRP, and then turned to directing. He died in 2021. Howard Hesseman went on to star as a high school history teacher in Brooklyn in the ABC sitcom Head of the Class, and died in 2022.

As of October 30, 2022, Gary Sandy, Loni Anderson, Richard Sanders, Tim Reid and Jan Smithers are still alive. Sandy has mostly done stage work since. Anderson paired up with former Wonder Woman star Lynda Carter for the series Partners in Crime, and was part of the main casts of the sitcoms Easy Street and Nurses.

Sanders was part of the main cast of The New WKRP, and has been a "character actor" since. Reid starred on Sister, Sister and, with his wife Daphne Maxwell, Frank's Place; and played recurring characters on Simon & Simon and That '70s Show. Smithers has not acted since 1987, although she attended a reunion of the surviving WKRP actors in 2014.

UPDATE: Loni Anderson died in 2025.

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October 30, 1978 was a Monday. Actor Matthew Morrison, famed for his starring role on Glee, was born.

Baseball season had ended 13 days earlier, when the New York Yankees beat the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the World Series. On ABC Monday Night Football, the Atlanta Falcons, with a defense known as "The Gritz Blitz," beat the Los Angeles Rams, 15-7 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.

The NBA, NHL and World Hockey Association seasons were underway, but, since they were all then struggling for attention, and didn't want to compete for TV ratings with Monday Night Football, no games were scheduled by any of them.