[BC] WKRP - Bill Dial

[DHultsman5@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/30/2005 8:56:05 AM Central Standard Time,  
scott at lagrange-com.com writes:

Actually, the character Bucky was only seen during the first season of  the
original show.  He was an original writer during that season,  also.  He
wrote the most famous episode, "Turkeys Away", which was  based on an actual
event at a Texas shopping mall.  He came back as  the executive producer of
the first run syndicated version of  WKRP.

Scott Cason



The Live Thanksgiving turkey giveaway was done by several stations.  I  
remember in the late 1950's KBOX in Dallas decided to release LIVE thankgiving  
turkeys at noon at Commerce & Akard streets in downtown Dallas.  The  station did 
a blind promotion stating a date, time and place for a Free  prize.  The did 
not get any permits with the city or anything.
 
The Chief Engineer ended up have to help the promotions & sales  department>  
He told the story of renting a truck and driving to a farm  south of Dallas.  
The placed the 25 live turkeys in the back of the truck  and drove to the 
location in downtown Dallas where he was told to simply open  the doors and the 
turkeys would jump out.
 
Turkeys tend to covey together and he stopped the truck, double parked, in  
major traffic and opened the door.  the turkeys just looked at him and all  
stayed in the front of the truck.  He had to climb in the truck and herd  them 
toward the back open door.  They didn't want to jump.  He pushed  some and his 
helper actually picked some up and threw them out some flew some  fell to the 
ground.  They had over half of them out when a police office  stopped the 
release.  The people were all there but what do you do with a  live turkey.  15 or 
so live turkeys are running all over the place,  blocking traffic.
 
The office arrests the CE and two employees and hustle them and the truck  
off to the police station, the animal control found most of the turkeys some  
were killed by cars.
 
The stations lawyers kept the personnel out of jail but the station paid a  
hefty fine. All stations had to get parade and assembly permits and pay for  
security from them on when doing promotions.
 
The engineer told me the GM told him to just open the door and they would  
all jump out and he was to leave and the jocks in a mobile unit would take  
over.  The jocks in the big red Mercury station wagons left when the  police 
appeared on the scene. 
 
 
DAve