A pathfinding radio documentary series: Norman Corwin’s One World Flight

Norman Corwin was the most celebrated writer of American radio’s golden era. This article examines his 1947 CBS series One World Flight that was based upon a round-the-world trip he had taken the previous year to assess the prospects for postwar peace. Corwin’s series provided a unique look at the world as it was slipping into the Cold War. It also helped pioneer the actuality-based broadcast documentary by using recordings as opposed to dramatizations and by helping end a longstanding ban that CBS andNBC had imposed against using recordings on the air. More broadly, One World Flight pointed toward network radio’s decline, as the networks soon afterward shifted their energies and revenues toward television. In addition, the series signaled the transition from the “good war” against fascism to the age of McCarthyism, with Corwin’s One World Flight scripts being subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and Corwin himself landing in the pages of Red Channels.