told <\/a>Rick Kaempfer in 2012. \u201cIt was a great station for talent; Jim Runyon, Barney Pip, Jim Stagg, Ron Britain.\u201d<\/p>\nRecalled Orkin: \u201cThe origin of Chickenman was the direct result of the popularity of the television show \u2018Batman.\u2019 It was huge. It was camp. It was fun. Draper decided that each of the DJs should choose a campy superhero mascot, and for the Jim Runyon show, we came up with Chickenman. I sort of based the character on the Broderick Crawford sheriff character--that sort of straight, know it all delivery of his. It seemed like a fun thing to parody. It began with that. I wasn't thinking about a chicken.\u201d<\/p>\n
Orkin went on to form his own radio production company in Hollywood, Dick Orkin\u2019s Radio Ranch, producing hundreds of award-winning ads in his trademark deadpan style. \u201cStan Freberg and Bob & Ray pointed me in the direction that advertising could be even more creative and entertaining than radio programming,\u201d he told me in 1982. \u201cI don\u2019t have any fault with the notion of commercialism; I find fault with the lack of creativity in selling.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2014.\u00a0He also was enshrined in the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame, the Illinois Broadcasters Hall of Fame, the Pennsylvania Broadcasters Hall of Fame and the Radio Advertising Bureau Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
Services for Orkin will be at 10 a.m. Thursday at Mount Sinai Hollywood Hills Memorial Park in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over a groundbreaking 68-year career in radio, Dick Orkin was the comic genius behind \u201cChickenman,\u201d the phenomenally popular serial spoof hatched at Chicago\u2019s WCFL in the 1960s, and later some of the funniest and most memorable commercials ever heard. Orkin died Sunday in California after suffering a stroke. He was 84.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16388"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16400,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16388\/revisions\/16400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertfeder.dailyherald.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}