Freedom is a Home Made Thing - Memorial Day Radio Drama - Living 1948

Radio critics are greeting NBC's new "Living—1948" drama-document series with warm words of approval. Newspapers and trade journals reviewing the premiere performance (February 29) studded their notices with phrases like "fascinating radio fare," "exciting and at times wonderful radio," "surprisingly thorough job" and "quite a hunk of stuff."
George Rosen in "Variety" called the series a "big-time excursion into public service programming." He also said: "The premiere broadcast made exciting and at times wonderful radio. The network has set itself a lofty and ambitious goal in this series—an overall documentation of the problems facing Americans as citizens in a democracy.
Harriet Van Home in the New York World-Telegram wrote in a full-column interview: "Its ambitious aim is to mirror the moment; to hold up for inspection the historical present. The first installment, 'Signs of Our Times,' was in the nature of a prelude, and it did a surprisingly thorough job of sketching a background—the temper of the times —against which the series will be projected."
Ben Gross in the New York Daily News said the series made "fascinating radio fare."
Leo Mishkin in the New York Morning Telegraph wrote: "This is nothing less, it appears, than an attempt to encompass the whole sum and substance of human experience, an effort to find out what way we're heading, to point, out the signs of the times, and to post warning and advices along the way." It was Mishkin who also termed the show "quite a hunk of stuff."
The second installment (today at 4:35 p.m. NBC-WKPT) will be titled "The Mental Health of the Nation," a psychiatrist's eye view of the mental health of the nation. Lou Hazam is scriptwriter for "Living—1948"; Ben Grauer the narrator, and Milton Katims the orchestra conductor.

From the June 18th, 1948 edition of the Canton Repository: