After this show aired, many radio stations across the country started the same Thanksgiving promotion, but dropping certificates redeemable for turkeys at their local supermarket, as opposed to live ones. Richard Sanders was often paid by stations to appear in his Les Nessman character and broadcast the event live.
This was ranked by TV Guide as one of the greatest episodes in TV history.
This was the most popular episode of the show, in terms of viewer reaction and fan mail. The episode, about a Thankgiving promotion that went wrong, was based on an actual radio station incident. Richard Sanders (Les Nessman) prepared for the episode by studying a recording of Herbert Morrison's live broadcast of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster. The line, "Oh, the humanity!" is taken from Morrison.
When this episode was rerun on CBS during the fourth season, Gary Sandy taped an introduction sitting in the broadcast booth set as he said the following. "Hi! I'm Gary Sandy. You know, of all the shows we've done on WKRP in the first three seasons, not one show ever generated the amount of mail, the amount of interest, as a show we did our very first season. It was called "Turkeys Away". So we kinda thought you might like to see it again. It's about Thanksgiving... so naturally we've chosen the Christmas season to show it. Happy Holidays. Drums, please. (Leading into the current season's credit sequence beginning) This is usually snipped from syndication prints, although it has been seen on some station's prints.
This is based on a real event that occurred while series creator Hugh Wilson was working at radio station WQXI in Atlanta, Georgia.