Jan. 6 and Fox News: We recall a town meeting tradition began in Bergen County | Opinion

Fox News’ decision not to air the first House Jan. 6 Committee hearing reminds us of a very different broadcast tradition – one represented by "America’s Town Meeting of the Air," a program from the Golden Age of Radio.

This show, which aired from 1935 to 1956, exposed audience members to all sorts of political views, especially those with which they disagreed.

It emphasized facts. It allowed the audience to question the guest experts. It insisted that democracy was better than autocracy.

And it grew from a seed planted here in Bergen County.

In 1932, a man named George V. Denny Jr. moved with his family from New York to the new model suburb of Radburn, in the farm town of Fair Lawn. Denny, who’d become a civics educator after stints as a Broadway actor and stage manager, believed that to teach, you also had to entertain.

He began organizing and moderating Sunday evening community discussions in the Radburn Plaza Building’s meeting room. Neighbors spoke frankly to neighbors about issues of the day.

Some topics were hyperlocal, such as: Are parents sufficiently involved in Radburn’s activities, “or merely using them to get rid of their children for a time.’’

Denny would remind everyone that the point of the discussion was not to settle on a solution or resolve an issue, but to "think about what was said.’’

These sessions were a dry run for what became "Town Meeting of the Air." But they might not have amounted to anything more had Denny not run into a friend near his home after one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s national radio “fireside chats.’’

The friend said he had a neighbor who so hated FDR that he’d “rather be shot than caught listening to Roosevelt."

That same evening, Denny would recall, he was walking in the park, ruminating on what his friend had said. That’s when he came up with an idea for a radio program that would both educate people about current events and expose them to rival views.

What motivated him, Denny explained, was this: “If we persist in Democrats reading only Democratic newspapers, listening only to Democratic speeches on the radio, and mixing socially only with those of congenial views, and if Republicans follow suit, we are sowing the seeds of the destruction of our democracy.’’

That democracy, he added, was “threatened by the ideology that a strong man can rule better than the masses of people.’’

Just a few weeks after Denny’s epiphany-in-the-park, he pitched an NBC executive on his idea for a radio program that would evoke the traditional New England town meeting. He was offered a six-week trial run.

"America’s Town Meeting of the Air" premiered Memorial Day 1935. It broadcast live from The Town Hall on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, with Denny as host and producer. The night’s topic: "Which Way America: Fascism, Communism, Socialism or Democracy?”

The show would become a Thursday evening fixture, in large part because Denny made it engaging and interactive. 

Some programs began with a trumpet fanfare, followed by a patriotic song, such as a Sousa march. Next, listeners heard the voice of a town crier who rang a bell, calling: “Town meeting tonight! Come to the old Town Hall and talk it over!” Denny then greeted the audience with a folksy, “Good evening, neighbors!”

Two main guest speakers — influential thinkers, political figures, scientists — took up the evening’s topic, such as press freedom, racism, socialized medicine or America's involvement in World War II.

Denny deliberately chose to broadcast his show before a live audience, rather than in an NBC studio. The cheers and boos reverberated in living rooms across America. Audience members — including some long-distance callers — also participated in a lively question and answer period.

Denny helped organize more than 700 “listener clubs' ' across America that gathered to hear and discuss the show. Libraries stocked books on the coming week’s topic. NBC made transcripts of the show available to the public.

And, to avoid even the hint of censorship, for its first decade the show had no commercial sponsor.

The program was an instant hit, and at its peak was broadcast by 170 stations to an audience of around 10 million.

The show was also a critical success. By 1949, it had won 46 national awards. Denny became the first two-time recipient — in 1943 and in 1945 — of the Peabody Award for Outstanding Educational Achievement.

After World War II, however, television began to supplant radio as the dominant broadcast medium. Denny tried to transition his show to TV, but the old formula did not work. He lasted as moderator until 1952; the show itself ran until 1956.

On Nov. 11, 1959, Denny died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 60 years old.

By that time, the show’s connection to New Jersey had been virtually forgotten. None of Denny’s obituaries mentioned his residence or work in Radburn. A New York Times obit incorrectly reported that the genesis of the radio show idea occurred while he was living in Scarsdale, in Westchester County, New York.

The "Town Meeting of the Air," like Radburn — “The Town for the Motor Age,’’ designed to protect pedestrians from cars — was a product of its time. It seems corny today.

Yet Denny’s warnings about the dangers of a polarized electorate and the importance of an informed public seem as fresh now as in they did those Sunday evenings nine decades ago.

Stephen Taylor and Rick Hampson lead free walking tours of historic Radburn. For information, contact Hampson at fjhampson@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Jan. 6 and Fox News: A town meeting tradition began in Bergen County