Soothing Savage Listeners

The best new twist along the radio dial is bringing listeners in growing numbers to little (5,000 watts) WPAT in Paterson, N.J., and making it one of the most popular stations in the New York metropolitan area. The station's simple yet radical idea: spare the listener the sound of the human voice, except at decent intervals, i.e., no oftener than every 15 minutes through the day and every half-hour in the evening. In between. WPAT. plays carefully chosen, well-groomed music, mostly the massed strings and muted brass of the Mantovani-Kostelanetz style, nothing more popular than show tunes or more classical than a Brahms waltz.

By keeping advertisers in their place between such long stretches of lush instrumentals, WPAT's President Dickens J. Wright, 44, has wooed so many listeners that he has drawn both advertisers and imitators. Newark's WAAT will start similar programming this week; New York's WOR shows the influence in a daily show, and last week Wright considered suing a California station for taking over WPAT's evening program title, Gaslight Revue, without permission. But he also encourages imitation. Says Wright: "We are in contact with 30 stations in the U.S. and Canada who are interested in our format." WPAT gives them advice, and for small fees will help in setting up similar musical oases in the yakety-yak radio desert. Such clients range from Miami's WSKP to a station being built in Manila.

"We get a station-wagon load of mail every day," says Wright, "a lot of it from people who want to know the name of the song played at 3:12 yesterday afternoon." Yet when the station asked whether listeners wanted numbers identified on the air, 15,000 wrote in to scotch the notion. The music is also popular with merchants. "I asked a store clerk the other day where they got their nice music," says Wright, "and he said, 'Why, that's your station.' " WPAT's only problem is a product of its success: so many advertisers now want to buy time that WPAT risks the temptation of growing into just the kind of station it is refreshingly not.

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