Music Appreciation Hour was a National Broadcasting Company radio series that offered lectures on classical music aimed at students. The show was part of a broader mid-20th-century movement to popularize serious music. From 1928 to 1942, orchestra conductor Walter Damrosch hosted the show. Radio Guide (March 18, 1939) commented: Except for the West Coast, Music Appreciation Hour was broadcast during school hours, and NBC provided teachers with supplementary materials. It also aired on Saturdays; in Nashville, Tennessee, local NBC affiliate WSM aired the program immediately before its weekly barn dance broadcast. A comment from Damrosch on a 1928 broadcast about there being no room in the classics for realism prompted host George D. Hay to comment how much the barn dance contrasted with the classics: as opposed to grand opera, Hay's program presented the Grand Ole Opry, thus offhandedly giving that program the name it has held for nine decades since.

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