The run
- Network
- NBC Blue
- Years active
- 1935–1952
- Surviving broadcasts
- 38
- Genre
- talk
America's Town Meeting of the Air was broadcast from New York's Town Hall from 1935 to 1956, first on NBC Blue and later ABC. Each week a panel argued a question of the day — labour, the New Deal, the Supreme Court, the coming war — and the studio audience was invited to put unscreened questions to the speakers. It is one of the earliest surviving records of live, unmoderated public argument on American radio. Recordings here are public domain, digitised by the Old Time Radio archives.
Restoration quality — measured from the surviving files
Source collection
Internet Archive audio collections
Rights
Public domain — no renewed US copyright
Cataloguing
Air dates and notes from the Archive item record
The shape of the run
What survives, year by year
12 dated broadcasts across 18 years on the air, with 10 years where nothing is known to survive. Brightness is transfer quality; empty cells are months lost to time.
Episodes
Start here
Listen to the run in order
Restored broadcasts from 1935, in original transmission order.
- 1. Will The Demands Of Organized Labor Promote Recovery · 14 Jun 1935
- 2. Should We Plan For Social Security · 19 Dec 1935
- 3. Will The Machine Dominate Man · 16 Apr 1936
- 01
Will The Demands Of Organized Labor Promote Recovery
14 Jun 1935 · 59 min
Originally broadcast on NBC Blue, 14 June 1935. Transferred from the Internet Archive's America's Town Meeting of the Air collection (public domain).
- 02
Should We Plan For Social Security
19 Dec 1935 · 59 min
Originally broadcast on NBC Blue, 19 December 1935. Transferred from the Internet Archive's America's Town Meeting of the Air collection (public domain).
- 03
Will The Machine Dominate Man
16 Apr 1936 · 58 min
Originally broadcast on NBC Blue, 16 April 1936. Transferred from the Internet Archive's America's Town Meeting of the Air collection (public domain).
- 04
What Does Democracy Mean
3 Feb 1938 · 1h 0m
Originally broadcast on NBC Blue, 3 February 1938. Transferred from the Internet Archive's America's Town Meeting of the Air collection (public domain).
- 05
Do We Have A Free Press
12 Jan 1939 · 1h 10m
Originally broadcast on NBC Blue, 12 January 1939. Transferred from the Internet Archive's America's Town Meeting of the Air collection (public domain).
- 06
What Are The Real Issues In The European War
19 Oct 1939 · 1h 0m
Originally broadcast on NBC Blue, 19 October 1939. Transferred from the Internet Archive's America's Town Meeting of the Air collection (public domain).
- 07
Can Business And Government Work Together Today
7 Dec 1939 · 1h 0m
Originally broadcast on NBC Blue, 7 December 1939. Transferred from the Internet Archive's America's Town Meeting of the Air collection (public domain).
- 08
What Should America Do For The Joads
7 Mar 1940 · 59 min
Originally broadcast on NBC Blue, 7 March 1940. Transferred from the Internet Archive's America's Town Meeting of the Air collection (public domain).
Also on NBC Blue
NBC Blue in 1935–1952
Other series the network carried while America's Town Meeting of the Air was on the air.
Same seasons
talk on the air then
Series in the same genre whose runs overlapped this one.
What it became
The roundtable of experts
Put clever people around one microphone, give them a question from a listener, and let the disagreement be the entertainment. Information Please and Town Meeting invented the format.
Lineage is written by our editors, not inferred from listening data.
Descendants
Working in the tradition of America's Town Meeting of the Air
Modern series carrying this form forward.
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