Those hours of midnight to six, where cities are relatively dead – very little going on except graveyard shifts and all night coffee shops. Before World War 2 even radio stations shut down until dawn. After the war, and because of the war staying up all night radio became part of our society and the all-night disc jockey was born. From what examples there are around, the musical choices weren’t in the direction of keeping you up all night. If anything, the music and the announcers could lull you to sleep within minutes, unless you were a dyed-in-the-wool insomniac.
The image of a darkened metropolitan radio station studio with only smokey shafts of light and the warm glow of meters in the control room offering a hypnotic accompaniment to the somnambulant musical choices spinning around on the turntables makes you wonder why all this relaxation didn’t put even the disc jockeys to sleep. No doubt it must have.
This particular example of “wee small hours radio” comes via WOR in New York and was broadcast on September 9, 1947 entitled “Moonlight Savings Time” – the host on this episode is Elwood Smith who was also a fixture on the Broadway stage during the 1940s and ’50s. I have run earlier episodes of this program and the format is the same; calm music, soothing voices – homespun philosophy, only with different announcers. The intended effect is the same; falling asleep in five minutes or less.
Cringeworthy in spots – it reflects an aspect of our society we don’t spend a whole lot of time looking at or listening to – but at least it gives you some idea of what America was looking and sounding like after World War 2. Long before the days of ASMR.
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