NBC Radio – Second Sunday – The Young Rebels – October 1968 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
Continuing the look at memorable and/or milestone documentaries of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. This one from October of 1968, right in the middle of the growing protest movements across America and the increasingly vocal youth Culture driving those protests.
If there was ever fertile territory for documentaries (both TV and Radio) it was the 60s – for all the inquiries and observations of life in the 1950s – those were exchanged for attempts at explanation, taking sides, asking questions – pleading for solutions. A lot of hand-wringing from about 1967 on. Media, rather than being the ones who stoked flames and ignited passions, tried to find answers – those attempts sometimes exposed just how much of a chasm had developed between generations – until media itself started looking for younger spokespeople and eyewitnesses to report and ask questions.
This was a decade of considerable upheaval – and it was only getting started. Documentaries were trying to throw light on issues and seek answers – and there were a lot to choose from. It seemed all the networks (and in the later 60s even Public Radio and Television) were offering some weekly look or exposé at what was happening in our country and to our people. Whether it was good for ratings or effective information it was hard to tell. We were all caught up in a tangle of messages and ideas – and we were getting older. Soon, we would be the ones in charge and the question would be whether we took the chance and blew it or not. Jury is still out on that one.
But to give you some small idea of what media’s role in getting information and delivering it was all about during this time, here is one Documentary that ran in October of 1968 – a month before the fateful election of Richard Nixon and the concepts of “The Silent Majority” and “Law and Order” began to spread.
1968 was a decade all by itself.
Here’s one of the reasons why.
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