Raffles the chimpanzee insists on watching "Mother Carey's Chickens", which turns out to be the top-rated television program that night. "Mother Carey's Chickens" is a 1911 novel by Kate Douglas Wiggin that was first filmed as Bonheur en location (1938). Walt Disney Productions (the studio behind "The Barefoot Executive") filmed its own version of the story as L'été magique (1963), with Hayley Mills.
The logo for fictional TV network UBC combines elements from the logos of major American networks National Broadcasting Company (NBC), American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and CBS.