Alan Butterworth Plaunt (March 25, 1904 – September 12, 1941) was a Canadian broadcasting pioneer, journalist and activist.
The son of a wealthy lumber family, Plaunt attended the University of Toronto and University of Oxford and was a keen observer of the fledgling British Broadcasting Corporation while in Britain becoming a believer in John Reith's approach to public broadcasting.
[1] With Graham Spry, he founded the Canadian Radio League in 1930 to mobilize political support for the creation of a public broadcasting system, first in the form of the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission in 1932 and then with the creation of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1936.
[1] He was also an active socialist as a member of the League for Social Reconstruction and helped write the Regina Manifesto which was the original program of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation.
[2] In the last years of his life, Plaunt helped organize the Neutrality League, a pacifist organization that opposed Canadian participation in the looming conflict in Europe.