The Smell of a Hit

"If you can't entertain people, give them something," Fred Allen cracked, in his disillusioned way. Vacationing on Cape Cod this week, Fred might well recall that crack: a giveaway program had belted Allen all the way down to No. 38 on the Hooperating, moved all the way up into the No. 2 spot itself.

Stop the Music, a hardy musical hybrid of "Miss Hush" and the Pot o' Gold, is a variation on a well-worked theme. Master of Ceremonies Bert Parks telephones to people chosen at random across the U.S., asks the listener to identify the popular tune then being played. If he can do that he wins a nominal prize and qualifies for a chance at the Mystery Tune, a stumper that sounds tantalizingly familiar. The most recent: Get Out of the Wilderness, vintage 1850, with a marked similarity to The Old Gray Mare. If a listener identifies the Mystery Tune, he wins the fantastic largesse of radio. (Stop the Music prizes have averaged close to $20,000 in bonds and merchandise for the three numbers identified so far.) If nobody guesses right during the show, the prizes are fattened up for next week.

ABC was so confident of this simple formula that they tossed Stop the Music, a full hour show, into one of the toughest spots in radio, Sunday from 8 to 9 p.m., E.D.T., bucking NBC's Charlie McCarthy and Fred Allen. Headlined Variety: "Who's Afraid of Fred Allen?" The confidence has paid off.

Why is the show such a success? Explains Producer Louis G. Cowan, who achieved early fame & fortune with the Quiz Kids (TIME, July 15, 1940): "We've made the home audience an integral part of every show ... I conceive of this thing as being kind of a national Sunday game." How sure had he been? Says Cowan: "There are certain things that have the smell of a hit about them. This thing smelled like a hit right off the bat."

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