Bob Chitester

Bob Chitester (October 30, 1937 – May 8, 2021) was an American Television Executive and Producer, best known for creating the 10-hour, ten-part series starring economist Milton Friedman called Free to Choose.

In the mid-1970's, Chitester became interested in making a counter series to the program hosted by left-liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith, which was called The Age of Uncertainty and first aired in 1977.

In Chitester's later years, he went on to found the Free To Choose Network[2] (FTCN), and created a high number of programs intended for public television distribution as well as release on platforms such as YouTube.

An article from The Wall Street Journal praised Chitester's work in creating Free to Choose, and in particular in launching economist Milton Friedman to stardom.

[3] The Wall Street Journal went further in stating that the influence that the Free to Choose program had on the Reagan administration was immense, as well as the effect the program had on the public-at-large by popularizing capitalism and free market ideas to millions[4] of television viewers well in to the 1980s: Bob Chitester’s 1980 PBS series ‘Free to Choose’ helped make capitalism popular.Chitester was known as a lone independent thinker in his beliefs as a General Manager of a Public Television station, "Mr. Chitester was probably the only PBS or NPR station manager who didn’t believe public radio and television should receive subsidies from American taxpayers.