Les is prominently featured in WKRP 's most famous episode , " Turkeys Away " ( season 1 , episode 7 ) , in which he reports on what turns into a disastrous station promotion , evoking Herbert Morrison 's emotional description of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster . This scene is widely acknowledged to be one of the funniest moments in television history . In an apparent in-joke reference to Alfred Hitchcock 's movie '' The Birds '' in which a near victim is trapped by birds in a phone booth , Nessman saves himself from being ganged up on by the turkeys by taking refugee in a phone booth . A running gag is that Nessman 's reporting ends in disaster : In the 1 November 1980 episode 3/1 " The Airplane Show " Nessman is taken " hostage " by a crazy veteran pilot who wants to draw attention to peoples ' indifference to Veterans Day ( 11 November )
1937 Hindenburg disaster
Hindenburg disaster
Les Nessman