Video Arts Television
"Interesting that Britain, the fatherland of the welfare state and the home of a major avowedly socialist party, should be where we would find producers sympathetic to free markets.” – Milton Friedman [1]
Video Arts Television Ltd was a television production company which produced a number of documentary films promoting neoliberal ideology.
Free to Choose
In his autobiography the neoliberal fundamentalist Milton Friedman notes the role that Harris had in putting together his 1980 neoliberal polemical documentary Free to Choose:
[We] felt that it was essential that the producer have his heart and not merely his technical skills in the project. In an effort to find such a producer, I called my friend Ralph Harris, the director and one of the founders of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the pre-eminent free-market think tank in Britain. He suggested several possible names and promised to explore these and other possibilities.
Bob had been planning a trip to London to talk to the BBC about its interest in acquiring the program when it was completed and to talk with possible producers. The extra stimulus from Ralph’s encouraging reaction led Bob to take off for London on August 10… By far the most important interview was with Antony Jay, recommended by Ralph Harris as “a Friedman fan” (initially from reading my Playboy interview). Jay was a partner in Video Arts, a television production company formed by ex-BBC employees who had wanted to escape bureaucracy… [Later] Bob and I took off on September 20 for London, where we had extensive discussions with Antony Jay and two of his partners who were to be the most closely involved in the production of Free to Choose, Michael Peacock, managing director and Robert Reid, chairman. In addition, Peacock arranged for us to interview Michael Latham as a potential producer. Unlike the producers we had interviewed in the United States, both the Video Arts trio and Michael Latham were sympathetic to our philosophy and enthusiastic about producing a documentary to present it. [2]
Notes
- ↑ Rose D. Friedman, Two Lucky People: Memoirs (University of Chicago Press, 1999) p.475
- ↑ Rose D. Friedman, Two Lucky People: Memoirs (University of Chicago Press, 1999) p.475-6
