The three who made Stop The Music go - co-creator Louis G. Cowan, host Bert Parks and co-creator Harry Salter.
STOP THE MUSIC!
ABC had a problem on Sunday nights in the spring of 1948. It needed a replacement at 8:00 for its costly Detroit Symphony broadcasts that it had carried since January, 1947. The low rated hour had been a profit center, sponsored by Ford Motors, but after Henry Ford died the company’s radio budgets were no longer dictated by its founder’s personal tastes. So, Ford dropped the hometown symphony and snapped up Fred Allen’s show on NBC in December, 1947.
As a result, ABC was on the hook for expensive concert broadcasts and needed something - anything - that had both listener and sponsor appeal against the Top Ten hour of Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy and Fred Allen on NBC and the growing mystery block of The Adventures of Sam Spade and Crime Doctor on CBS.
Enter Louis G. Cowan, creator of The Quiz Kids and the legendary AFRS wartime series, Command Performance. Cowan and his collaborator, respected journeyman conductor Harry Salter, proposed a music-based giveaway show similar to the 1939-40 Top Ten show Pot O Gold with mounting jackpot prizes on the scale of Truth Or Consequences’ highly successful secret identity contests. (See Truth Or Consequences on this site.)
Above all, their Stop The Music! could be inexpensively produced at only $12,000 an hour - including prize money - with Salter’s studio orchestra, two vocalists and a glib, singing host to tie it all together. Bert Parks, 33, was chosen for that job. A decorated World War II veteran, Parks had over a decade of network experience to his credit and was known to listeners as host of Bristol-Myers’ big money quiz, Break The Bank, on ABC.
Stop The Music! was simple. Popular and traditional songs were played by Salter’s orchestra without identification or sung by vocalists Kay Armen and Dick Brown who would hum over titles in lyrics. Parks would break into songs shouting, “Stop The Music!,” which indicated he had a contestant on the line whose telephone number had been picked at random. The listener was asked to name the song just played.
If the contestant correctly identified the song, a major prize was awarded, often a large household appliance - plus the opportunity to identify the jackpot’s “Mystery Melody,” usually a vaguely familiar folk or classical selection with an obscure title. Every week more prizes were added to the jackpot - mostly merchandise obtained in exchange for glowing promotional plugs rattled off by Parks and announcers Doug Browning or Don Hancock.
If the at-home contestant failed to answer the first question, a member of the studio audience was chosen to identify the song and awarded the prize - but not given a chance for the “Mystery Melody” jackpot which was reserved for telephone contestants.
Stop The Music! was first broadcast on March 21, 1948, and a reported $5,000 worth of merchandise prizes was awarded. It made headlines six weeks later when a North Carolina contestant won the “Mystery Melody” jackpot touted to be worth $17,000, ($167,000 in today’s money), including a new car, a diamond ring, a $1,000 Savings Bond and an assortment of household appliances and furniture.
Sponsors were getting intrigued by the fast paced show. ABC sealed the deal by offering it in quarter-hour segments to non-competing advertisers. Lorillard’s Old Gold Cigarettes bought two quarter hours while Smith Brothers Cough Drops and Spiedel Watch Bands each sponsored one. Stop The Music! was the first major prime time show to be sold in pieces and with advertising it first appeared in the June, 1948 Nielsen reports with a 12.6 rating. An opening portion from an early 1948 broadcast is also posted below.
By that time, Edgar Bergen had taken Charlie McCarthy and left on summer vacation from his NBC timeslot at 8:00. Bergen’s departure stranded Fred Allen at 8:30 with the feeble lead-in of Bergen’s summer replacement, the Robert Shaw Chorale’s concerts of traditional music. Without Bergen’s powerful escort, Allen’s season long average rating of 22.7 sank to a 9.4 in June against the second half hour of Stop The Music!
Allen seemed to welcome the challenge of the upstart giveaway show. On his season’s farewell show of June 27, 1948, the comedian spent the opening minutes with his wife, Portland, joking about the giveaway craze and referring to Stop The Music! by name three times. The veteran comedian may have thought it was smart humor but to ABC it was a fortune in free publicity.
Then Ford and NBC brought in a curious summer replacement for Fred Allen at 8:30 against Stop The Music! RFD America was a simplistic quiz show from Mutual that featured farmers as contestants. It was the brainchild of Stop The Music’s co-creator, Louis Cowan, which meant that two of Cowan’s shows were programmed opposite each other on competing networks. (1) Against NBC’s rural quiz and actor Herbert Marshall’s espionage drama The Man Called X on CBS, Stop The Music! easily won the 8:30 time period and more listeners were becoming exposed to the fast moving giveaway show.
The FCC complained in August, 1948, that Network Radio schedules contained 40 quiz and giveaway programs that according to Broadcasting Magazine’s June study, awarded a total of $165,000 in prizes during one week. Particular targets of the complaint were Stop The Music! and Truth Or Consequences.
The commission floated a broad reinterpretation of the 1934 anti-lottery statutes aimed at giveaway and quiz shows. The bureaucrats proposed to outlaw any effort on the part of listeners as a requirement to win a radio contest. That included writing a letter, answering the telephone or even listening to a specific program. (2)
Although wide loopholes existed in the edict, ABC, CBS and NBC prepared to file injunctions against it. The giveaways continued while the argument between the FCC and the networks dragged on.
By the beginning of the 1948-49 season, Stop The Music! had been on the air for six months and had awarded three jackpot prizes averaging nearly $20,000 in retail value.
The real Sunday night battle resumed in October when Edgar Bergen and Fred Allen returned to NBC after summer vacation. Well publicized momentum appeared to be on Stop The Music’s side. But the half hour charts for the last quarter of 1948 tell a different story:
October through December, 1948 - 8:00 to 8:30 p.m.
NBC Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy 20.1
CBS The Adventures of Sam Spade 16.6
ABC Stop The Music 12.3
October through December, 1948 - 8:30 to 9:00 p.m.
NBC Fred Allen 18.7
ABC Stop The Music 16.5
CBS Cabin B-13 - Sustaining & Unrated NA
Despite Stop The Music’s also-ran ratings, ABC had every right to be delighted with its hour-long giveaway show that attracted headlines, listeners and advertising revenue.
Allen continued to call attention to Stop The Music! when he opened the 1948-49 season on October 24 with an offer of $5,000 to any listener who could prove missing a chance at winning a Stop The Music! prize from listening to his show. The broadcast opens with a formal announcement of the “insurance” offer.
Then in late 1948, CBS Chairman Bill Paley did a huge favor for Stop The Music! He hired Edgar Bergen away from NBC and broke up the Bergen-Allen ratings tandem in January, 1949. The ventriloquist left the air for the rest of the season before joining the CBS Sunday lineup at 8:00 ten months later.
Bergen’s long absence was the giveaway show‘s big break. Whether he was at NBC or CBS, the soft spoken Scandinavian and his popular alter egos consistently stopped Stop The Music! in its tracks.
NBC and Ford seemed to be at a loss when Bergen left in January. In retrospect the network could - with proper inducements to their sponsors - have moved the successful Red Skelton, People Are Funny, Duffy’s Tavern or A Date With Judy into Bergen’s former time period. Instead, Allen was shifted from his familiar timeslot of three and a half years and moved into Bergen’s vacated half hour at 8:00 with disastrous consequences.
January, 1949, was also the turning point for Allen’s new lead-in at 7:30, the Phil Harris & Alice Faye Show. When Jack Benny left NBC as their lead-in at 7:00 and joined CBS at mid-season, their ratings tumbled from an October-December average of 22.7 to 11.8 for the rest of the season.
Given his new time period and weak lead-in Allen suffered in the January to June ratings:
January through June, 1949 - 8:00 to 8:30 p.m.
ABC Stop The Music 16.1
CBS The Adventures of Sam Spade 10.4
NBC Fred Allen 9.4
By June and five straight months of third place finishes, Allen was discouraged, bitter and in ill-health. The 55 year old comedian abandoned his weekly series on June 26th, closing out a 17 year career in Network Radio.
Stop The Music’s 1948-49 full-hour ratings record was truly remarkable. It reflects an unmatched popularity growth in which the show added at least one rating point each month - over 376,000 homes per point - for six consecutive months from September through March, rising from an 11.3 to a 20.4. The program finished at 18th in the Annual Top 50 and provided a strong lead-in to Walter Winchell whose ratings improved by 26% over the previous season.
Capitalizing on the show’s popularity, a television version of Stop The Music! began on ABC-TV’s Thursday night schedule on May 5, 1949 and settled in for a three year run.
But it was all downhill from there for the radio show‘s ratings. In the 1949-50 season Edgar Bergen and Red Skelton on CBS and television did what the FCC couldn’t do - they shut down Stop The Music! The giveaway show lost 40% of its ratings and dropped from 18th to 57th place in the season’s rankings against the new CBS tandem of comedians and the surging popularity of Ed Sullivan’s Toast of The Town on CBS-TV.
It got worse in the 1950-51 season when Stop The Music! lost another third of its audience and finished in 73rd place. A full episode from January, 1951, illustrates that it remained an entertaining fast paced hour but Parks had to rely more on studio contestants because listeners at home were becoming harder to find. Radio giveaway shows had lost their appeal and television had taken the Sunday night audience.
Stop The Music! left the air on August 10, 1952 after four seasons with a 4.2 rating at 71st place. But it was a great ride while it lasted for the ABC giveaway show that stopped Fred Allen - with strong assists from both CBS and NBC.
(1) Cowan obviously had no loyalty to Stop The Music! In July, 1949, he created Hollywood Calling for NBC - a short-lived Sunday night hour of movie stars calling at-home contestants offering huge jackpots of prizes immediately preceding Stop The Music! on ABC.
(2) A New York Federal Court rejected the FCC’s ruling and granted permanent injunctions to CBS, ABC and NBC against its enforcement on February 5, 1953.
Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
ABC had a problem on Sunday nights in the spring of 1948. It needed a replacement at 8:00 for its costly Detroit Symphony broadcasts that it had carried since January, 1947. The low rated hour had been a profit center, sponsored by Ford Motors, but after Henry Ford died the company’s radio budgets were no longer dictated by its founder’s personal tastes. So, Ford dropped the hometown symphony and snapped up Fred Allen’s show on NBC in December, 1947.
As a result, ABC was on the hook for expensive concert broadcasts and needed something - anything - that had both listener and sponsor appeal against the Top Ten hour of Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy and Fred Allen on NBC and the growing mystery block of The Adventures of Sam Spade and Crime Doctor on CBS.
Enter Louis G. Cowan, creator of The Quiz Kids and the legendary AFRS wartime series, Command Performance. Cowan and his collaborator, respected journeyman conductor Harry Salter, proposed a music-based giveaway show similar to the 1939-40 Top Ten show Pot O Gold with mounting jackpot prizes on the scale of Truth Or Consequences’ highly successful secret identity contests. (See Truth Or Consequences on this site.)
Above all, their Stop The Music! could be inexpensively produced at only $12,000 an hour - including prize money - with Salter’s studio orchestra, two vocalists and a glib, singing host to tie it all together. Bert Parks, 33, was chosen for that job. A decorated World War II veteran, Parks had over a decade of network experience to his credit and was known to listeners as host of Bristol-Myers’ big money quiz, Break The Bank, on ABC.
Stop The Music! was simple. Popular and traditional songs were played by Salter’s orchestra without identification or sung by vocalists Kay Armen and Dick Brown who would hum over titles in lyrics. Parks would break into songs shouting, “Stop The Music!,” which indicated he had a contestant on the line whose telephone number had been picked at random. The listener was asked to name the song just played.
If the contestant correctly identified the song, a major prize was awarded, often a large household appliance - plus the opportunity to identify the jackpot’s “Mystery Melody,” usually a vaguely familiar folk or classical selection with an obscure title. Every week more prizes were added to the jackpot - mostly merchandise obtained in exchange for glowing promotional plugs rattled off by Parks and announcers Doug Browning or Don Hancock.
If the at-home contestant failed to answer the first question, a member of the studio audience was chosen to identify the song and awarded the prize - but not given a chance for the “Mystery Melody” jackpot which was reserved for telephone contestants.
Stop The Music! was first broadcast on March 21, 1948, and a reported $5,000 worth of merchandise prizes was awarded. It made headlines six weeks later when a North Carolina contestant won the “Mystery Melody” jackpot touted to be worth $17,000, ($167,000 in today’s money), including a new car, a diamond ring, a $1,000 Savings Bond and an assortment of household appliances and furniture.
Sponsors were getting intrigued by the fast paced show. ABC sealed the deal by offering it in quarter-hour segments to non-competing advertisers. Lorillard’s Old Gold Cigarettes bought two quarter hours while Smith Brothers Cough Drops and Spiedel Watch Bands each sponsored one. Stop The Music! was the first major prime time show to be sold in pieces and with advertising it first appeared in the June, 1948 Nielsen reports with a 12.6 rating. An opening portion from an early 1948 broadcast is also posted below.
By that time, Edgar Bergen had taken Charlie McCarthy and left on summer vacation from his NBC timeslot at 8:00. Bergen’s departure stranded Fred Allen at 8:30 with the feeble lead-in of Bergen’s summer replacement, the Robert Shaw Chorale’s concerts of traditional music. Without Bergen’s powerful escort, Allen’s season long average rating of 22.7 sank to a 9.4 in June against the second half hour of Stop The Music!
Allen seemed to welcome the challenge of the upstart giveaway show. On his season’s farewell show of June 27, 1948, the comedian spent the opening minutes with his wife, Portland, joking about the giveaway craze and referring to Stop The Music! by name three times. The veteran comedian may have thought it was smart humor but to ABC it was a fortune in free publicity.
Then Ford and NBC brought in a curious summer replacement for Fred Allen at 8:30 against Stop The Music! RFD America was a simplistic quiz show from Mutual that featured farmers as contestants. It was the brainchild of Stop The Music’s co-creator, Louis Cowan, which meant that two of Cowan’s shows were programmed opposite each other on competing networks. (1) Against NBC’s rural quiz and actor Herbert Marshall’s espionage drama The Man Called X on CBS, Stop The Music! easily won the 8:30 time period and more listeners were becoming exposed to the fast moving giveaway show.
The FCC complained in August, 1948, that Network Radio schedules contained 40 quiz and giveaway programs that according to Broadcasting Magazine’s June study, awarded a total of $165,000 in prizes during one week. Particular targets of the complaint were Stop The Music! and Truth Or Consequences.
The commission floated a broad reinterpretation of the 1934 anti-lottery statutes aimed at giveaway and quiz shows. The bureaucrats proposed to outlaw any effort on the part of listeners as a requirement to win a radio contest. That included writing a letter, answering the telephone or even listening to a specific program. (2)
Although wide loopholes existed in the edict, ABC, CBS and NBC prepared to file injunctions against it. The giveaways continued while the argument between the FCC and the networks dragged on.
By the beginning of the 1948-49 season, Stop The Music! had been on the air for six months and had awarded three jackpot prizes averaging nearly $20,000 in retail value.
The real Sunday night battle resumed in October when Edgar Bergen and Fred Allen returned to NBC after summer vacation. Well publicized momentum appeared to be on Stop The Music’s side. But the half hour charts for the last quarter of 1948 tell a different story:
October through December, 1948 - 8:00 to 8:30 p.m.
NBC Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy 20.1
CBS The Adventures of Sam Spade 16.6
ABC Stop The Music 12.3
October through December, 1948 - 8:30 to 9:00 p.m.
NBC Fred Allen 18.7
ABC Stop The Music 16.5
CBS Cabin B-13 - Sustaining & Unrated NA
Despite Stop The Music’s also-ran ratings, ABC had every right to be delighted with its hour-long giveaway show that attracted headlines, listeners and advertising revenue.
Allen continued to call attention to Stop The Music! when he opened the 1948-49 season on October 24 with an offer of $5,000 to any listener who could prove missing a chance at winning a Stop The Music! prize from listening to his show. The broadcast opens with a formal announcement of the “insurance” offer.
Then in late 1948, CBS Chairman Bill Paley did a huge favor for Stop The Music! He hired Edgar Bergen away from NBC and broke up the Bergen-Allen ratings tandem in January, 1949. The ventriloquist left the air for the rest of the season before joining the CBS Sunday lineup at 8:00 ten months later.
Bergen’s long absence was the giveaway show‘s big break. Whether he was at NBC or CBS, the soft spoken Scandinavian and his popular alter egos consistently stopped Stop The Music! in its tracks.
NBC and Ford seemed to be at a loss when Bergen left in January. In retrospect the network could - with proper inducements to their sponsors - have moved the successful Red Skelton, People Are Funny, Duffy’s Tavern or A Date With Judy into Bergen’s former time period. Instead, Allen was shifted from his familiar timeslot of three and a half years and moved into Bergen’s vacated half hour at 8:00 with disastrous consequences.
January, 1949, was also the turning point for Allen’s new lead-in at 7:30, the Phil Harris & Alice Faye Show. When Jack Benny left NBC as their lead-in at 7:00 and joined CBS at mid-season, their ratings tumbled from an October-December average of 22.7 to 11.8 for the rest of the season.
Given his new time period and weak lead-in Allen suffered in the January to June ratings:
January through June, 1949 - 8:00 to 8:30 p.m.
ABC Stop The Music 16.1
CBS The Adventures of Sam Spade 10.4
NBC Fred Allen 9.4
By June and five straight months of third place finishes, Allen was discouraged, bitter and in ill-health. The 55 year old comedian abandoned his weekly series on June 26th, closing out a 17 year career in Network Radio.
Stop The Music’s 1948-49 full-hour ratings record was truly remarkable. It reflects an unmatched popularity growth in which the show added at least one rating point each month - over 376,000 homes per point - for six consecutive months from September through March, rising from an 11.3 to a 20.4. The program finished at 18th in the Annual Top 50 and provided a strong lead-in to Walter Winchell whose ratings improved by 26% over the previous season.
Capitalizing on the show’s popularity, a television version of Stop The Music! began on ABC-TV’s Thursday night schedule on May 5, 1949 and settled in for a three year run.
But it was all downhill from there for the radio show‘s ratings. In the 1949-50 season Edgar Bergen and Red Skelton on CBS and television did what the FCC couldn’t do - they shut down Stop The Music! The giveaway show lost 40% of its ratings and dropped from 18th to 57th place in the season’s rankings against the new CBS tandem of comedians and the surging popularity of Ed Sullivan’s Toast of The Town on CBS-TV.
It got worse in the 1950-51 season when Stop The Music! lost another third of its audience and finished in 73rd place. A full episode from January, 1951, illustrates that it remained an entertaining fast paced hour but Parks had to rely more on studio contestants because listeners at home were becoming harder to find. Radio giveaway shows had lost their appeal and television had taken the Sunday night audience.
Stop The Music! left the air on August 10, 1952 after four seasons with a 4.2 rating at 71st place. But it was a great ride while it lasted for the ABC giveaway show that stopped Fred Allen - with strong assists from both CBS and NBC.
(1) Cowan obviously had no loyalty to Stop The Music! In July, 1949, he created Hollywood Calling for NBC - a short-lived Sunday night hour of movie stars calling at-home contestants offering huge jackpots of prizes immediately preceding Stop The Music! on ABC.
(2) A New York Federal Court rejected the FCC’s ruling and granted permanent injunctions to CBS, ABC and NBC against its enforcement on February 5, 1953.
Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
| stop_the_music_opening_1948.mp3 |
| fred_allen_show_6-27-48.mp3 |
| fred_allen_show_10-24-48.mp3 |
| stop_the_music_1-21-51.mp3 |
