Alcoholics on the AirRadio Column
One of Detroit’s citizens stepped up to the microphone one night last week and told how he had “hit bottom” as an alcoholic. To underline his confession, some of the more melodramatic and sordid aspects of his past were dramatized. Then he told of his regeneration. Summed up the announcer: “Alcoholism is a disease . . . an obsession. . . an allergy . . . .”
The man who “hit bottom” was the first in a parade of anonymous Detroiters who will describe their alcoholic pasts over WWJ every other Saturday (11:15-11:30 p.m., E.W.T.). The series is the first sustained air flight of the famed organization called “Alcoholics Anonymous” (Time, Oct. 23).
Detroit A.A.s give credit for the broadcast project to 62-year-old William Edmund Scripps, big boss of the Detroit News and WWJ. He was so impressed by A.A.’s reformation of a drunkard friend that he decided to do what he could to boost the organization’s Detroit membership (now nearly 400).
(Source: Time, March 5, 1945)