WBBR Sold by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society

RADIO broadcasting has played a big role in the preaching of God’s kingdom in the past thirty years. It was on February 24, 1924, that WBBR, a noncommercial radio station owned by the Watch Tower Society, began broadcasting in New York city.

At the time there was a great need for this station and other stations that the Society purchased throughout the United States in later years, and the reason why the radiocasters were used was that “this good news of the kingdom” could be preached in large population centers. In those days back in the 1920’s there were not very many house-to-house publishers in the large cities to reach the people with the Kingdom message, and radio was the coming thing. Millions of homes had receiving sets and could hear the truth.

Things have changed since 1924, especially in New York city. Back in 1924 there was only one congregation of Jehovah’s witnesses, with approximately 200 publishers, and these brothers had territory assigned to them that included all of Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, Manhattan, Staten Island and parts of New Jersey. They had millions of people to serve. So in those days it was thought that we could quickly reach the millions if we used a radio station, and for years radio station WBBR was used. Even up to the year 1940 there were only 1,548 publishers serving in New York city; so that meant that there were not enough congregation publishers or full-time pioneers to reach this heavily populated area.

But now, in 1957, there are more than 7,000 publishers. In fact, in December, 1956, New York city’s sixty-two congregations reached a new peak of 7,256 congregation publishers, and in addition to this we have 322 pioneers working in all of this area. Now we can give real attention to the people through home Bible studies. The record shows that in 1940 there were home studies with phonograph recordings and a question-and-answer booklet being conducted on a limited scale, whereas now there are more than 5,000 Bible studies being conducted weekly with bound books, booklets and magazines as study aids.

The large sum of money needed to operate the radio station can now very well be used in missionary and special pioneer work in other lands as well as in America. So the Society decided to sell WBBR and did so April 15, 1957. WBBR had served its purpose and the interests of God’s kingdom well. We rejoice that so many new witnesses of Jehovah have come forward to do the preaching and instruction work that is so necessary to bring a knowledge of the truth to people. People could not ask questions over the radio as easily as they now can through personal contact and study in their homes with their own Bible.