I Thought Turkeys Could Fly

Lessons from My 1st Interview & the Greatest Thanksgiving Episode in TV Sitcom History

Nov 27, 2024

a group of chickens in a fenced in area — You’re telling me turkeys can’t fly? Photo by Heather Gill on Unsplash

Writing a weekly article, I tend to be aware of when a Wednesday falls on a special date. Holidays and anniversaries make for timely subject matter.

Today is a two-fer! It’s Thanksgiving Eve in the U.S., and it’s a special anniversary involving a very talented friend who gave me a gift exactly one year ago.

On Nov. 27, 2023, “The Jeff Macolino Podcast” episode with me as the guest premiered (listen on Spotify, Apple, ListenNotes, Amazon, Podchaser). It was the first podcast I’d appeared on to talk about my book; the “leadoff hitter” in what would become a lineup of 16 podcasts featuring me as guest over a 12-month period. I would eventually cite this first published interview in one, two, three, four Substack articles (and today makes five!).

Toward the end of that show with Jeff, I spoke of taking care not to revere things in life that ultimately prevent better things from happening. I think it’s appropriate for Thanksgiving Eve (and for the next section, when I talk about the TV show). I said:

The idea is not to exalt and celebrate the wrong thing.
Don’t exalt rationalism, when intelligence is really where you want to go.
Don’t exalt ritual, when the meaning is where you want to go.
And don’t exalt outsourcing things — like status and credentials and being a good citizen — when where you really want is someone who has insourced and developed their conscience and can be a good neighbor.

See the list by clicking on the image above or this caption.

‘He’s the station manager, and he feels left out’

“WKRP in Cincinnati” ran for four seasons on primetime television in the U.S. from 1978 to 1982. Of course, like lots of other things in the digital age, it lives on … online! The famous “Turkeys Away” episode from the sitcom’s first season (ep. 7) is available at Internet Archive (paired with ep. 8).

In “Turkeys Away,” station manager Arthur Carlson was a few months into the radical transformation of his AM radio outfit into a Top 40/Rock-n-Roll broadcaster. Carlson had hired a younger, more casually dressed, but very capable program director, Andy Travis, to shepherd the changes and hopefully bring the lackluster WKRP into more prominence.

It worked!

Travis removed many of the personality-crushing restrictions on DJs Johnny Fever and Venus Flytrap. He had Bailey Quarters, a younger employee more attuned to the new audience, help with promotions. Even the old holdovers, like news reporter Les Nessman, and salesman Herb Tarlek, along with receptionist Jennifer Marlowe, adjusted to the new direction.

The only problem seemed to be that Carlson didn’t understand what was happening at the ground level and didn’t feel like he’d contributed to the turnaround. He’s the boss, but he’s bored. He started to meddle in what everyone else was doing. At best, he slowed down his employees, who worked hard to develop a successful operation. At worst, he cost Tarlek a new client and then kept everyone in the dark about a Thanksgiving promotion.

It failed!

‘I thought it would work! I planned this thing right down to the last detail!’

In the final scene, a defeated Carlson learned the hard way that trying to force people and events to conform to one’s own designs can backfire. He didn’t know nearly as much as he pretended to know; it cost him.

And his scheme to keep his vision to himself prevented him from getting any helpful feedback (until it was too late!).

The station’s newfound success had stemmed not from top-down, control-freak behavior, but from its organizational opposite: freeing people’s entrepreneurial drives to try new things. The employees were accountable for what they experimented with and had to own both their hits and misses, but this made them even more motivated to do well!

Individual responsibility and openness achieved what micromanaging couldn’t.

Suffice to say, the episode shows the dangers of, as I said a year ago to Jeff Macolino, aiming to “exalt and celebrate the wrong thing.” Carlson’s intentions had some good in them — he wanted to contribute, to be more than a passive observer — but his overwhelming desire for emotional validation and his faulty, status-wielding methods ultimately betrayed him and others.

I empathize with Carlson. Like him, I’m not an inventive person. I’m a skilled integrator and tinkerer, but I’m no visionary who comes up with great ideas and new products. I tend to work behind the scenes, rather than in the spotlight.

But, I’ve learned to be comfortable supporting people who are in more conspicuous roles, without wanting the attention for myself. Every day, I pray “to fulfill my responsibilities and let other people fulfill their responsibilities.”

I’ll let you watch the episode, which clocks in at about 25 minutes in duration (the first half of the Internet Archive, two-episode video), for all the hilarious details, in case you haven’t seen it yet. The last line of the show, delivered by a still-befuddled Carlson, is one of the great utterances in TV history.

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you learn and grow, today and every day (I hope I do, too).

Some ideas for ‘stuffing’ the Comments section

What are your favorite Thanksgiving episodes of TV shows? Where does this “WKRP” episode rank for you?

Ever feel like Carlson did in this episode, that things were going well but you were bored and/or felt that you hadn’t participated the way others had?

Has your high status in an organization spurred you to meddle with subordinates and attempt to claim credit for the good being done by others? Has someone else of higher status done that to you?

Did you listen to my first-ever podcast interview from exactly one year ago? What did you think of it?

Anything else interest you about today’s topics?

Share your thoughts below …

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