The brothers at Bethel had been working for more than a year to build the WBBR radio station on Staten Island, New York City. After clearing the land, they constructed a large home for the workers and a separate building for the equipment. When this work was completed, the brothers began to assemble the equipment necessary to go “on the air.” But they would need to overcome several obstacles.

The brothers found that installing the main antenna for the station proved difficult. The 91-meter-long (300-ft-long) antenna needed to be hung between two wooden masts that were each 61 meters (200 ft) tall. The first attempt failed. Trusting in Jehovah’s help, the brothers finally succeeded. Calvin Prosser, who worked on the project, observed, “If our first attempt had succeeded, we would have patted ourselves on the back and said, ‘Look at what we did!’” The brothers credited their success to Jehovah, but their problems were not over.

Radio broadcasting was in its infancy, and commercially built equipment was not readily available. So the brothers obtained a used, crudely built 500-watt transmitter that was available locally. Instead of purchasing a microphone, they used one from an ordinary telephone. One night in February, the brothers decided to test all this makeshift equipment. They needed a program to broadcast, so the brothers sang Kingdom songs. Ernest Lowe recalled with amusement that while the brothers were singing, they received a call from Judge Rutherford,b who heard their singing on his radio in Brooklyn, about 25 kilometers (15 mi) away.

“Stop that racket,” quipped Brother Rutherford. “You sound like a bunch of cats!” Slightly embarrassed, the brothers quickly shut down the transmitter, but they were confident that they were ready for their first broadcast.

On February 24, 1924, during the first official broadcast, Brother Rutherford dedicated the radio station “to the interests of the kingdom of the Messiah.” He stated that the purpose of the station was “to enable the people to understand in the light of the Bible, regardless of creed or denomination, the meaning of the times in which we are living.”

That first broadcast was a great success. For the next 33 years, WBBR served as the hub of the organization’s radio broadcasting efforts.