Free to Choose
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. 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. 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). 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.