Bob Chitester, the chief producer of Free to Select, appears again.
Imet Bob Chitester 25 years in the past like numerous others did — with a name out of nowhere from an infectiously upbeat man from Erie, Pa., with an concept I simply needed to hear and couldn’t probably resist. On this case, it was for a TV present explaining free-market ideas with a variety of younger individuals because the hosts. Bob had determined I used to be going to be one in all them, and so it was. We taped a number of episodes, and I realized classes in TV that have been extraordinarily invaluable and nobody else was going to take the time to show me.
Bob most famously was the chief producer of the legendary Free to Select TV collection with Milton Friedman, actually one of the vital influential packages of the final 50 years.
He has remained an evangelist for freedom with quite a few different TV initiatives underneath his belt on the Free to Select Community. Bob has a terrific zest for spreading concepts, for educating younger individuals, and . . . for just about every part he encounters. He is a good fanatic and has at all times been decided to impart his pleasure to others.
He’s now gravely unwell with most cancers, and I just lately took the chance to verify in with him about his profession and Free to Select. Right here is our dialog, edited for area and move.
RL: So, Bob, the place are you from?
I used to be raised in a small city, in North Central, Pennsylvania. I bought a full-ride scholarship to the NROTC and went to the College of Michigan.
I enrolled within the engineering division as a result of my high-school math and physics and chemistry trainer thought I used to be fairly sharp. The very first algebra Blue Guide confirmed me that I didn’t know what I thought of algebra.
I needed to enter music, however I couldn’t due to the scholarship. I then selected radio and tv.
RL: After you get your levels, you truly go into TV after all.
Sure, my first job was at a highschool, brand-new highschool, Greenfield Excessive Faculty, outdoors Salem, Michigan.
I used to be employed to go there as a result of they’d gotten the Ford Basis grant to arrange a closed-circuit tv system for educational functions. So I set that up.
I am going to work for a university to do the identical factor I’d completed on the excessive faculties, arrange a closed-circuit TV system, the place college members might primarily lecture as many as 400 or so college students.
One factor led to a different, and I turned the overall supervisor of a public TV station in Erie, Pa., at age 28 or 29. I managed over the following three years to place collectively the appliance to the FCC, increase cash, the entire thing, and launch the station in 1967.
RL: By the best way, have been you at all times a free-market sort? Or did you could have a conversion?
I used to be at all times a free-market sort within the sense that I describe myself as an individualist. I instinctively was in-built such a method that I used to be not vulnerable to see strain.
RL: OK, so how do you get from this Erie, Pa., station to Free to Select?
A bit of later, I met Wilson Allen Wallis, who was one in all three individuals — Milton, George Stigler, and Allen Wallis — that Milton known as The Three Musketeers. He was then chairman of the Company for Public Broadcasting. I’m a really outspoken loudmouth, head of a small public TV station. In order that on the nationwide conferences, individuals bought to know me pretty effectively, as a result of I used to be at all times concerned in no matter controversy was happening. After which I met Wallis, and he was astonished to search out that there was truly the top of a public TV station who shared his and Milton’s and Stigler’s concepts.
Round this time, John Kenneth Galbraith had written a ebook, The Age of Uncertainty, and the BBC created a collection hosted by Galbraith on his concepts. I believed there wanted to be a response to that. Wallis instructed me, “Effectively, Bob, should you’re actually severe about doing one thing, I do know who must be your host.” And he talked about Milton Friedman.
RL: Then, he places you in contact with Rose and Milton?
Sure, after 4 conferences with them, they agreed to do the TV collection.
So, we produced the TV collection, and it was completed and able to go by, I believe it was round June of 1979. We did it, didn’t get proven till January of 1980 on PBS. Then, it was once-a-week for ten weeks.
RL: When did you understand in the midst of producing and broadcasting this collection that you simply had one thing particular happening?
By the point the third program aired, I’m speaking to Milton on the cellphone, one in all our common conversations. And close to the top of it, he says I wish to provide you with a brand new cellphone quantity. He then went on to clarify, he stated, “You understand, Bob, I don’t like and I simply can’t do an unlisted quantity.” To him, it meant that he thought he was higher than different individuals.
Anyway, he tells me, “I needed to change the quantity. I’m getting cellphone calls from all around the world. They need me to take a position cash for them.”
To this very day, I will probably be assembly anyone — and this occurred just lately right here with some native individuals — and once they uncover that I created, Free to Select, then they instantly say, “Oh, my gosh, Bob, that collection modified my life.”
Then, you could have Estonia, the place Prime Minister Mart Laar actually used Free to Select, the ebook, as a information in establishing the Estonian authorities.
RL: And Milton will get a best-selling ebook out of it, too?
Sure, and that is related to the present’s success as a communications device. The ebook is modified transcripts of ten TV exhibits, in order that the TV collection comes first.
Milton and Rose took the transcripts of the packages again to Vermont. And in a brief time frame, got here again out with a ten-chapter ebook. And the gross sales have been phenomenal — 100,000 hardback, the primary 12 months within the U.S.
RL: And also you stayed near the Friedmans within the years after this system?
Let me provide you with an instance of each the consolation degree that Milton and I and Rose had collectively. This was after Milton’s ninetieth birthday. So, I arrive at their house, and he had turn into accustomed to asking, “Bob, what number of miles did you run at this time?” And on this specific occasion, I stated, “Effectively, I didn’t go operating, however I did do 250 abdomen crunches.” He didn’t know what that was, and I couldn’t consider any technique to describe it higher than simply getting down on my again and doing a pair. And the following factor I do know, Milton is doing these tiny little raises, and Rose bought down on the opposite facet and did the identical factor.
RL: As somebody who has spent many years eager about how we talk these concepts of markets and liberty, what classes have you ever gleaned?
I bought very excited concerning the work of Jonathan Haidt as a result of it supported the angle I’ve at all times had, which is individuals decide primarily based on emotion, after which they flip round and attempt to discover the suitable technique to purpose it out.
The purpose is to get individuals to grasp, initially, the entire concern of what it means to stay in a free society. And by way of storytelling, discover one thing that’s pure to that particular person, by way of their conduct, or the best way they assume, and so on. And to give you a narrative, a story that aligns with their private expertise as a result of now they’re being given a logical rationalization of why they determined X.
RL: Bob, to say you’re a completely happy warrior is an understatement. The place does that come from?
Effectively, one in all my successes has been my curiosity. You understand, as a high-school child, I labored a couple of little jobs, and so on. And I found one thing there. I might make any job considerably attention-grabbing. After which it’s simply taking that angle as you go ahead.
To deliver it again to Free to Select, it’s extraordinary that since 1980, with an exception or two, there’s not been one other such try at giving the American public a clear-eyed sense of the society envisioned by the Founders, which are typically eroding away.
And these concepts are very highly effective. The underside line was, Milton, 1; the Soviet Union, 0.