Free To Choose Network

Free To Choose Network, is a Pennsylvania nonprofit corporation based in Erie, Pennsylvania. Free To Choose Network, is occasionally referred to as Free To Choose Media and the two different names have been used at times interchangeably.[1]

Free to Choose Network
FounderBob Chitester
President and CEO
Robert Chatfield
Senior Executive Producer
Thomas Skinner

Free To Choose Network has three main initiatives:

  • Free To Choose Media, which produces television programs and videos making classical liberal economic and political ideas accessible to a popular audience
  • izzit.org, which produces media for K-8 audience, sometimes adapting public television broadcasts for public school use[2][3][4]
  • The Idea Channel - specializing in video recording of conversations between scholars, including numerous Nobel Prize winners

Free To Choose Network was founded by Bob Chitester, using start-up money provided by a number of charitable sources. At the time of Free To Choose Network's founding, Bob Chitester was the general manager of two public broadcasters in Erie, Pennsylvania: the PBS channel WQLN-TV and the NPR station WQLN-FM.

History

The origins of the foundation lay in PBS's broadcast of The Age of Uncertainty (1975), a 13-part BBC series produced by Canadian-American liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith.[5] The chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was a classical liberal economist, W. Allen Wallis, who had met Chitester in 1975 when he participated in a symposium on "Technology and Society" arranged by Chitester in Erie and learned that Chitester shared his classical liberal economic views.[5] Wallis and Chitester both believed that PBS should produce a classical liberal response to The Age of Uncertainty. Wallis therefore introduced Chitester to his old friend Milton Friedman in early 1977 (shortly after Friedman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences).[5] As a result, Chitester raised the necessary funding and executive produced a 10-part PBS series entitled Free to Choose, which first aired in early 1980. Friedman also co-authored a book with his wife Rose Friedman that was based on the television series and also called "Free to Choose". The book spent 5 weeks at the top of the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Sellers List in 1980.

It was in the context of producing the Free to Choose series that Chitester first organized Amagin, Inc., which ultimately became Free To Choose Network. Under the trademark Free To Choose Media it continues to produce media describing classical liberal economic ideas to a mass audience. Beginning in 1999, Free To Choose Network, was licensed by ABC News to distribute John Stossel TV specials under the brand "Stossel in the Classroom". The license was cancelled in 2004.

Current projects

Free To Choose Media has produced a number of programs for public TV including: a biography of Milton Friedman, entitled The Power of Choice - The Ultimate Resource (named after the 1981 book The Ultimate Resource by Julian Lincoln Simon) -Turmoil and Triumph a biography of George Shultz - The Power of the Poor, hosted by Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto - India Awakes, hosted by Swedish scholar Johan Norberg - The Real Adam Smith", hosted by Johan Norberg, and most recently "A More Or Less Perfect Union" hosted by Federal United States district court judge, Douglas H. Ginsburg.

The organization currently known as izzit.org was initially called In the Classroom Media.[6] Izzit.org provides teachers with materials on current events and other topics for in-classroom use. Izzit.org has featured celebrities such as Drew Carey and Scott Bakula in some of its productions.

Much of the Idea Channel archival footage now appears on YouTube.

References
  1. "Free to Choose Network- About". Free To Choose Network "About Us" Page. Retrieved 14 November 2020.
  2. "One Eye To Protecting The Brand". Entertainment Marketing Letter. 1 Aug 1999. Retrieved 2008-07-04.
  3. "The Right Whines". The Nation. 2 Oct 2000. Retrieved 2008-07-04.
  4. Prime-time propagandist, Is ABC's John Stossel a reporter or a right-wing apparatchik? By David Mastio Archived 2009-06-22 at the Wayback Machine
  5. "Personal Reflections on Milton Friedman - by Bob Chitester - News Releases". Heartland.org. Retrieved 2010-09-26.
  6. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-07-24. Retrieved 2008-11-27.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
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