Provoked by the pro-labor clauses of the New Deal's National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA), in 1933 the NAM embarked on a campaign of employer opposition that forestalled the imposition of collective bargaining in the steel, chemical, and auto industries. Announcing an "active campaign of education" in September of that year, Association President Robert L. Lund explained that NRA Section 7(a) posed a special threat to employers, given the "untruthful or misleading statements about the law" made by the American Federation of Labor and "communistic groups promoting union organization." Lund concluded that the American public would become favorably disposed toward business's traditional prerogatives and institutional choices if only business leaders would "tell its story."

     Drawing upon the "home service personality" expertise of its packaged goods producers, the NAM led the way in radio with the episodic adventures of the American Family Robinson. The program appears to have been proposed by Harry A. Bullis, General Mills vice president and chairman of NAM's public relations committee. The American Family Robinson's drop-dead attacks on the New Deal reflected the print-oriented focus of the NAM's traditional publicity techniques. The interjection of editorial comment into the Robinson's soap opera plot reduced series protagonist Luke Robinson, "the sanely philosophical editor of the Centerville Herald," to a caricature of the factory town newspaper editor that the NAM assiduously cultivated with an open-ended supply of pro-industry pre printed mats, columns, and tracts.

     Editor Robinson, the program's repository of sound thinking and common sense, is beset by social schemers and panacea peddlers. Some are threatening and even criminal, but most are simply misguided. Among the latter is Robinson's brother­-in-law, William Winkle, also known as "Windy" Bill, the itinerant inventor of the "housecar." Bill's meddlesome and uninformed political ideas are as unexpected as his unannounced visits with the Robinsons. More menacing is Professor Monroe Broadbelt, the "professional organizer of the Arcadians, a group using the Depression as a lever to pry money from converts to radical economic theories" (from American Family Robinson, cited in MacDonald, 1979).

     The storyline of the American Family Robinson revolves around the resolution of political conflict in the home and immediate community through the application of "time-tested principles." The Robinsons are shocked when their daughter Betty falls under the oratorical spell of Professor Broadbelt, a common criminal whose turn of phrase suggests a certain Hyde Park, New York, upbringing. Complications attend Betty's engagement to the Arcadians' charismatic leader, whose first consideration is his chosen mission: "The upliftment of mankind." Broadbelt's motives, however, are neither idealistic nor romantic. In the next episode, Luke Robinson helps apprehend Broadbelt, who has skipped town with the Arcadians' treasury. Returning to Centerville, Robinson presides over the liquidation of the Arcadian movement by publicly refunding the contributions of its confused and misguided members, including his daughter's.

     In certain households, interest in the American Family Robinson undoubtedly did exist. The program attracted an articulate audience that appreciated and responded to the NAM's send-ups of New Deal liberalism. From fan mail the NAM learned that listeners responded enthusiastically to Luke Robinson's comic foil "Windy" Bill. Written into the script as an incidental character, "Windy" soon returned to Centerville with a role expanded to include yet more meddlesome and annoying business. Other changes occurred as characters changed careers and took on new responsibilities. In 1935 Luke Robinson left the editorship of the Centerville Herald to become the assistant manager of the local furniture factory. Although Robinson remained the series' protagonist, a new character, "Gus Olsen," a janitor who had made the best of his lot in life, assumed Robinson's place as the managing editor and owner of the Herald. A tabloid "Herald" mailed to listeners from "Centerville" announced the changes and included photographs of the "Robinsons" reading their fan mail along with the paper's articles, editorials, cartoon, and crossword puzzle.