Imagine. You set up your electronics store with staff to deal with the rush of customers as they burst through your doors.

A camera crew is there early in the morning to film the expected stampeed and, as the doors open, only one guy is there to pick up a pre-order.

That’s what happened at a London retailer hoping to cash in on the Black Friday sales.

As life often immitates art (or is it the other way around? I can never remember which) an episode of that radio peoples’ cult series from the late ’70’s – early ’80’s WKRP in Cincinnati dealt with an outside broadcast at a downtown Hi-Fi store. The episode featured all the main charcters that would normally be involved in such an event: Herb the sales manager, Andy the PD, Mr Carlson the GM, Bucky the unionist tech, Dr Johny Fever, the journeyman jock and Del, the owner of Del’s Discount Hi-Fi. 

At about the same time that WKRP was in its third season, 2WS (now WSFM) had a late night chemist as a big advertiser. In terms of customers, the advertising was a huge success but they cancelled anyway. Along with the influx of paying customers the advertising attracted so many robbers that the chemist was being held up almost weekly. Despite heavy security (which ate heavily into the profits) the staff were being traumatised beyond endurance.

Anyway, here’s that WKRP episode from YouTube. Sadly, the picture quality is not great but the dialogue is hilarious.