Producing Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose: How Libertarian Ideology Became Broadcasting Balance

Abstract

In the first weeks of 1980, Public Broadcasting Service affiliates across the United States aired Free to Choose, a television series featuring the economist Milton Friedman. This article focuses on the production team, which brought Friedman’s small-government, market-focused perspective via privatizing the production of public television. Specifically, executive producer Robert Chitester’s success in bringing the series to air stemmed from two factors: first, he expressed social imaginaries that helped coordinate funding relationships with underwriters; and second, he drew on his institutional knowledge of public television production to navigate zones of regulatory ambiguity without running afoul of broadcast rules and regulations.