NBC Radio – Second Sunday -“The Year 2000” Narrated by Chet Huntley – March 6, 1966 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
Continuing the survey of memorable Radio Documentaries of the 50s, 60s and 70s, a documentary produced by NBC Radio for the Second Sunday series featuring noted news anchor Chet Huntley narrating a look ahead to the year 2000.
Like just about every documentary regarding the future, The Year 2000 presents a wildly mixed assessment as to what the world is going to look like, a mere 34 years into the future. The verdicts range from the gleefully optimistic to the horrifically despairing. The universal opinion, on the parts of sociologists and scientists, is that there will be less hours devoted to work and more hours devoted to leisure. Very optimistic and the first prediction to get tossed out the window. More workers, less work, more poverty, more pollution, less food, bad air – people living in gargantuan apartment complexes because almost no one has a house and no one has any land.
But then there were those who predicted life would be considerably better, that in the ensuing 34 years we will have come to our senses and dramatically reduced pollution, found different sources for food – clean up the air and overall create a better quality of life for the people of Earth in general.
Falling somewhere in the middle seems to be the reality of the situation – although 22 years after this Documentary was to have ended, we are still a long way from attaining any of the positive goals and are well on our way to attaining the dystopian ones.
No where is breathed a word about Social Media – it simply did not exist in any form in 1966 – and even if it had in 1966, would it be considered a good thing? We’re still wondering.
So to get an idea of what people were listening to and wondering about in 1966, here is that episode of Second Sunday; “The Year 2000” as it was broadcast on March 6, 1966 over NBC Radio.
(the cartoon above that most epitomizes what were afraid was going to happen, came via Ron Cobb, who was a regular commentator on life as it actually was, not imagined, from the L.A. Free Press – he became something of a prophet – or maybe just a realist – Underground newspapers, despite sensational headlines, bore grains of truth).
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The broadcast date on this one was actually December 11, 1966.
This tape came from NBC Radio directly and has the March 6th date on it. I am assuming this was done several months prior to the broadcast date, since it was part of the Second Sunday series.