 When McDowall was unavailable, Sandrich recommended Jump, who had just played a memorable role for Sandrich as the bumbling Police Chief Tinkler on the show "Soap".Carlson was a parody of Jerry Blum (c.1932–February 16, 2019), the President and General Manager of WQXI in Atlanta, Georgia from 1960 to 1989.The turkey drop, in particular, was a much-exaggerated version of one of Blum's real stunts, when he attempted to drop turkeys off the back of a truck and caused a melee of people looking for a free turkey; Carlson's postmortem was lifted, with only slight alteration, from Blum's own reaction to his stunt.