WHRB DJ Wins Playboy Prize; A Week-End Date With Playmate

Peter C. Salerno '68 has won a date with a Playmate.

Salerno, a WHRB disc-jockey, is the grand prize winner in a nation-wide Jazz Poll Contest sponsored by Playboy. The contest, open to hundreds of disc-jockeys across the country, offered as but prize a weekend with one of Playboy's fold out paper dolls.

Salerno entered the contest in mid-November. He was notified that he had won by long distance phone call from Playboy headquarters in Chicago last Tuesday.

The contest was linked to Playboy's annual Jazz Poll in which its readers are asked to select the top jazz musicians of the year. The balloting results in the selection of a hypothetical big band, made up of leading jazz artists, as well as the top instrumental and vocal LP's of 1965 and three outstanding jazz personalities to be enshrined in Play Jazz Hall of Fame.

Disc-jockeys were asked to predict the outcome of the reader poll. They had to name the top artists and guess the order of their popularity. Salerno's choices most nearly conformed to the results of the reader poll.

The first prize originally consisted of the choice between two options. The first option was a Playboy Club membership, and a Playboy key to be delivered by a bunny in full uniform, at a time and place of the DJ's choosing. Lamentably, this option was closed to Salerno, who does not meet the 23-year age requirement for Playboy Club membership.

He was forced to accept the second option -- the Playmate caper -- as first prize. Together with his hosts, he will select the date and plan his own weekend, including an itinerary of restaurants, nightclubs, and public appearances.

He will also help choose his Playmate-date, although the selection will be limited because many of the Playmates have extensive public engagements. Jo Collins, for example, Playmate for 1966, who visited Harvard last October, is now in Vietnam.

The weekend publicity drive can become hectic, and has on occasion been cut short by the winner. Salerno quoted one Playboy spokesman as saying, "We don't want to make you feel like a victim. We want you to feel like the contest winner you are."

Besides the weekend, the only tangible reward Salerno will receive will be a year's subscription to Playboy, "which," the spokesman said, "is really a pretty grand prize when you think about it."