Moonlight Savings

Listeners within broadcast range of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts have lately made a surprising discovery: there are often better programs on the air from midnight until 7 a.m. than during the daylight hours. This came about because after Pearl Harbor a number of powerful stations on both coasts were ordered to stay on the air around-the-clock to aid the Fighter Commands in case of air raids.

Aware that night work in war industries has swelled the owl audience, most of the stations now make a real effort to put on good programs for early morning listeners.

There are exceptions. Some stations merely hired "disk-jockeys" to ride herd on swing records, in the traditional milkman's matinee style. WJZ, New York, evolved a six-hour, all-musical program in which every word except the news flashes is sung. A chorus, jam band and harpsichord render the station breaks in such senseless jingles as this:

Lo listen to the key Blue station Even though the hour be late. Prithee lend thine ears--Oh gate Though hush-a-tongue no idle talk Over WJZ, New York.

Other stations--among them, WABC and WOR, New York; KFI, KNX and KHJ, Los Angeles; and KIRO and KJR, Seattle--do better. They often blend a mixture of news, swing, classical and semi-classical recordings and transcriptions of good network sustainers. Many of the stations report rapturous letters from workers on the night shifts, but sponsors haven't come a-rushing.

Celebrities & Furs. One of the few post-midnight programs to find favor with both workers and sponsors is Moonlight Saving Time (WOR, New York, 2 to 5:30 a.m., daily), a pre-war innovation that celebrated its first birthday last week. Moonlight is slanted at night workers, with news twice an hour, transcriptions of important fight broadcasts, This Is Our Enemy and similar shows.

The man who makes Moonlight shine is young, handsome Jerry Lawrence, former actor and amateur wrestler at San Diego State College. He rounds up live talent for the program, and in recent months has introduced Peter Arno, Sheila Barrett, Tommy Dorsey and Guy Lombardo on his "Celebrities Corner" feature.

One of Moonlight's biggest sponsors is Furrier I. J. Fox. Survivors from a tanker torpedoed off New Jersey last winter told Lawrence about how they had spent a long, cold night in a small boat hearing him praise the luxury of furs.

Midwest stations have paid much less attention to the radio wants of night workers. The best late show beamed at war workers in the 1,500 plants which operate 24 hours a day around Chicago is Night Watch over WIND, Gary, Ind. One of the pioneer all-night shows, started in 1934, Night Watch consists of news, rebroadcasts of important speeches, records and patter.

As yet, no station has decided that the millions of men now home in the morning and afternoon might like to hear some thing besides soap operas.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.