Beddy-Bye

Americans are said to be lonely people, and they are loneliest of all in the late watches of the night--when the inebriate becomes sentimental, the salesman paces his hotel room, the insomniac looks through his medicine cabinet. Radio fills the lonely time with all-night music, but television has moved more uncertainly. It has the brash irrelevancies of Steve Allen, the late late movies, the fast-talking pitchman promising a better, lanolin-coated world for $1 down and $1 a week.

To cut itself a bigger slice of this audience, Manhattan's WRCA-TV, flagship of the NBC network, moved right into the boudoir last week with a silken five-minute sign-off spot called Count Sheep (weekdays, 1 a.m.). Its star is Nancy Berg, a 24-year-old, Wisconsin-born model, who floats onscreen in filmy lace, stretches her bare arms, yawns delicately, glances teasingly out of her cathode bedroom, pops into bed and out again for a moment's play with her French poodle.

When she finally cuddles, beneath the covers, the camera moves in for a gulping closeup. Nancy murmurs "good night" but makes it sound like an invitation marked R.S.V.P. Her eyes close, her lips part gently and she drifts off to slumberland to fadeout music and a cartoon of fence-jumping sheep.

Miss Berg, who wants to be an actress ("Of course, I don't consider that I act on this show--I'm being myself, which is harder than acting"), earns $150 for each five-minute performance, will get $500 when she gets a sponsor. In her opening week, she wore a different full-length nightie for each show, but now she feels comfortably at home, henceforth will skip about in scanties.

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