MBS Soapbox

In these days of remote political control, radio is doing a major part in putting the U. S. people and their Government on speaking terms. Along with fireside chats, political debates, spot-news broadcasts of national events, the radio forum helps to put the whole nation into a healthy, old-fashioned town meeting. Outstanding are America's Town Meeting of the Air, University of Chicago Round Table, MBS's American Forum of the Air. Oldest of these is the American Forum, which from small beginnings in 1928 has progressed until today it is a favorite aerial stamping ground for U. S. Congressmen.

The Forum is a very lively affair. In 45 minutes each Sunday night, its participants work up from calm discussion to an oral free-for-all with no holds barred. So fierce is the pace on many Forum debates that it takes a lot of doing to keep opponents from settling it outside.

Impresario of the Forum of the Air is wispy, 37-year-old Theodore Granik, who looks like a younger version of Leon Blum. A lawyer by profession, Granik used to be assistant director of Manhattan's WGBS (now WINS), where he did everything from conducting Biblical readings to reporting prize fights. One of the ideas he cooked up for WGBS was a program known as Law for the Layman. When the station was sold in 1928, he transferred his show to WOR, decided to transform it into a forum after listening to Congressman Celler of New York and Mrs. Ella Boole of the W. C. T. U. discuss the legal angles of Prohibition.

Granik's expenses are paid by Mutual's WOR, but he gets nothing in the way of salary. However, he picks up about $250 a month running a Forum, patterned after his air show, for United Feature Syndicate and he earns $10,000 a year as special counsel to the U. S. Housing Authority. Last week, he incorporated with Idea Man Maurice Dreicer (who introduced Where Are You From?), prepared to serve as consultant for any forum group in the country at fees ranging from $10 to $200.

As a forum expert, Granik gets plenty of opportunity to exercise his skill when he takes to the air. Frequently his debaters start battling over cocktails at the Willard Hotel, from which the Forum is broadcast, work themselves into a knock-down-drag-out humor even before they reach a mike. A memorable evening was provided by Burton Wheeler when he growled that the "New Deal's triple 'A' foreign policy" would "plough under every fourth American boy." Spectators at the show are also often difficult. Before he established the rule that questions from the floor must be submitted in writing, Granik was bothered by claques of Coughlinites and Communists, who yelped at great length and to no purpose. He places only one restriction on his forum: he permits no Communists to debate.

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