The compilations mixed newsreel footage and eyewitness interviews, focusing on great events, unfamiliar historical episodes, and biographical portraits, including contemporary figures in the arts, sciences, law, and politics.

But the company approved the topics and limited the treatment of issues it felt to be potentially upsetting to a large audience, particularly social and religious subjects.

Prudential withdrew sponsorship after the ninth season when sports programming seriously cut into the number of its 6 pm Sunday timeslots, and contemporary subjects came to dominate productions.

Many episodes had original scores commissioned from a wide range of contemporary classical and film composers, including Antheil, Auric, Creston, Gould, Hovhaness, Kay, Kubik, Milhaud, Nascimbene, Rosenthal, Shapero, Siegmeister, Tcherepnin, and Waxman.

Produced by many of The Twentieth Century team and narrated by Cronkite, the new series focused on what humankind could shape and expect by examining aspects of the future already evident in the present.