Radio: Music in the Night

General Manager Ted Cott, of Manhattan’s station WNBC, is a man who abhors a vacuum. In February the Civil Defense authorities asked him to keep WNBC on the air from midnight until 6 a.m. so that the station would be ready to function instantly in case of an emergency. All the Civil Defense required was a constant tone signal. Instead, Cott decided to fill the six hours with classical music and see what would happen.

In three days, Music Through the Night drew 1,000 enthusiastic letters. In three months the mail had reached 20,000, and scores of listeners still call in every night to ask the name of the program’s haunting theme song (Greensleeves, a 16th century English air). Listeners have sent in valentines, poems, flowers and art work to show their appreciation. Congressman Albert Morano of Connecticut saluted “the marked contrast to the claptrap coming from other stations.” Composer Richard Rodgers wrote a grateful letter on behalf of his ill wife; Cartoonist Milton (Steve Canyon) Caniff said: “Like many another night worker, I am your ardent supporter.” A group of 47

Yale medical students sent a joint letter; so did 70 customers at Chumley’s Bar & Grill in Greenwich Village. Says Cott: “We seem to have an absolute saturation coverage of the colleges. Guys who burn the midnight oil have this show on all the time.”

Cott sold the show to its first sponsor by dumping a sack of unopened mail on a desk and offering odds that there wouldn’t be a single uncomplimentary letter in the lot. Since then, Music has averaged five sponsors a night (ranging from Victor records to Dormin, a sleeping pill). Despite Cott’s boast, there have been critical letters aplenty. Almost all of them say, in effect, that the trouble with the show is that music lovers can’t bring themselves to turn the radio off and go to bed.