The American Forum of the Air

The American Forum of the Air, hosted by Theodore Granik (1907–1970), was a public affairs panel discussion program, the first series of its kind on radio. It aired on the Mutual Broadcasting System and NBC from 1934 to 1956. Notable guests, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt (before he was president), journalist Dorothy Thompson, New York mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, U.S. Senators Harry Truman and Robert A. Taft, discussed a wide range of topics, from the New Deal to fascism. The series won a Peabody Award in 1940.

The program's origins can be traced back to 1928 when Brooklyn-born Granik was a law student employed by Gimbels department store, which then had its own radio station, WGBS. While writing copy for the station and doing sports reporting, Granik started his own program, Law for the Layman. When Gimbel's station was sold to William Randolph Hearst in 1932, Granik continued doing his panel discussions on New York's WOR. The program attracted national attention with a prohibition debate in which the Woman's Christian Temperance Union's Ella A. Boole made the startling claim that drunken Congressmen were wandering through "underground passages" to go from their offices to Washington speakeasies.

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