Illustration · A small radio studio at night, with a microphone, a script and a glass of water on the desk, a clock on the wall, and the On the Air sign dark. Not drawn from a photograph.

On the radio · 1941–1950

On the air

Radio carried AA’s story into living rooms, and one member’s plan to go on the air under his own name nearly took AA’s name with it.

“I’ve got the right of free speech, and I’m going on the air whether you like it or not.”

A member, writing to AA’s office, as Bill W. quoted him · Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, 1957

Twelve lectures

Radio found AA early. In 1941 NBC began a 13-part syndicated series, Is Alcohol a Problem in Your Home?, and by 1945 Bill W. could write that the press had been joined by “radio commentators and, here and there, AA-sponsored radio broadcasts.” In Jacksonville a member named Bruce H. was, Bill wrote, “the first to use radio to carry the message.”

One of AA’s pioneers had the same idea. A local station with a reach of about a hundred miles offered to help him start a group by radio, so he wrote “Twelve Lectures on Alcoholics Anonymous,” a strange mixture, Bill thought, of AA and his own religious ideas, and delivered them “with all the vigor of a Chautauqua orator.” Inquiries came in, and he started a group.

Then a prominent life insurance company offered to sponsor him on a national network, under his own name, as an AA member, for a generous fee. AA’s office objected, and the trustees told him his message wasn’t right for the whole country. His answer, as Bill quoted it: “To hell with the trustees, the world is waiting for my message.”

It looked, Bill wrote, like “promotion, professionalism, and anonymity-breaking all in one package.” So the office told him that if the lectures went on the air, every AA group would hear the story and be asked to write the sponsoring company. “The broadcast never went on the air.” Out of it, Bill wrote, came the trustees’ charge over AA’s public relations, and the principle of “attraction rather than promotion.” The long form of Tradition Eleven puts it this way: “We feel it better to let our friends recommend us.”

Radio kept coming back to AA. Marty M. explained alcoholism and AA on We the People in 1946; a member explained the program on WNBC’s morning show Hi, Jinx in 1948; and in 1949 a ten-episode CBS drama about an alcoholic who finds AA brought AA’s office a flood of inquiries.

Listen On the air About 1 minute

The station log

On the dial

AA on the radio, from Morgan R.’s interview of 1939 to the Cleveland convention of 1950. Two of the early broadcasts carry no date in Bill’s accounts.

From Pass It On (1984), Bill W.’s accounts in AA Comes of Age (1957) and the Grapevine (1945 and 1950), the Grapevine’s timeline of 2002, and Time (1945).

April 1939
We the People, network radio
Morgan R. tells his story and plugs the Big Book. Of 20,000 postcards mailed to doctors about the broadcast, twelve come back. Twelve postcards tells it.
1941
NBC
A 13-part syndicated series, Is Alcohol a Problem in Your Home?
Early years
Jacksonville, Florida
Bruce H., working in Jacksonville and around it, is “the first to use radio to carry the message,” Bill wrote.
Early years
A local station
A pioneer’s “Twelve Lectures” start a group. His plan for a national network never goes on the air.
March 1945
WWJ, Detroit
On Saturday nights members tell their stories, “a parade of anonymous Detroiters,” Time reports. Masks takes Detroit to television.
1946
We the People
Marty M. explains alcoholism and AA.
1948
WNBC, Hi, Jinx
A member explains the program’s principles on the morning show.
1949
CBS
A ten-episode drama about an alcoholic who finds AA. The office is deluged with inquiries.
July 1950
The Cleveland convention
Before Warden Duffy tells of San Quentin’s AA group, the convention hears a recording, “soon for radio release,” of AA life within the walls. Inside the walls tells the group.

Under his own name

Members went on the air more than once in radio’s first decade with AA. The broadcast AA stopped was the one a member meant to make under his own name, as an AA member, for a sponsor’s fee.

For a closer look

Go deeper

How Bill told the lectures story twice, whether the lecturer had a name, and an offer from the liquor trade.

Two tellings

Bill told the story in the Grapevine in January 1955, in “Why Alcoholics Anonymous Is Anonymous,” and again, at more length, in AA Comes of Age two years later. The book reprints the 1955 essay too, as an appendix.

The 1955 telling says the office read the lectures and found them “about 50 percent AA and 50 percent our friend’s personal religious convictions,” and promised “several thousand letters of objection” to the sponsor. “Our friend abandoned the project.”

In the 1955 telling the life insurance company commissions the lectures for a national hookup from the start, and Bill only paraphrases the member’s reply: the trustees “could go plumb to the devil.” The 1957 telling adds the local station and the group it started, and quotes the letter itself: “To hell with the trustees.” It also credits the episode with putting AA’s public relations in the trustees’ hands. (The short form, in Rule 62, gives the 1955 version in a line.)

Who was he?

Bill never named him. Elsewhere in the same book he names Bruce H. of Jacksonville as the first to carry AA’s message by radio, but he doesn’t connect the two, and none of the books on hand does either.

The liquor trade’s offer

The lectures weren’t the only offer. In the same 1955 essay Bill wrote of a liquor trade association that wanted an AA member to take on a job of “education”: people were to be told that too much alcohol was bad for anyone, and that alcoholics shouldn’t drink at all. The catch was that every piece of it was to carry his full name as a member of AA.

It never got far, Bill wrote, but it showed what one member could do by hiring out to another cause and declaring his AA membership to the whole public. (Outsiders can understand us has the liquor trade’s view of The Lost Weekend.)

Sources

Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. “When A.A. Came of Age,” “Unity: The Second Legacy” and Appendix B.
The Language of the Heart. AA Grapevine, 1988. Bill W., “Modesty One Plank for Good Public Relations” (August 1945), “We Came of Age” (September 1950) and “Why Alcoholics Anonymous Is Anonymous” (January 1955), first printed in the AA Grapevine.
Pass It On. AA World Services, 1984. Chapter 12.
AA Grapevine, “From Akron to the Internet: A Time Line of AA Communication,” October 2002.
Time, “Alcoholics on the Air,” March 5, 1945, as reprinted in AA History Lovers, 2008, messages on early Detroit AA.
aa.org, Public Information Workbook (M-27i).