VISION ON

Vision On narrates the distinguished and at times turbulent history of one of the fundamental pillars of British broadcasting – arts television. This volume chronicles the rise and decline of the arts on British television, exploring in parallel the role of the Arts Council of Great Britain in funding and distributing arts films. Beginning with television documentaries and lectures in the 1950s, the arts became central to the public service remit of the broadcasters. By the 1980s Channel 4, often working with the Arts Council, was boldly redefining the relationships between the arts and television, but as the millennium approached broadcasters focused on maximising audiences and arts programming was marginalised. While television remains important, arts and media producers today are finding exciting new ways to work together. With detailed discussion of the cultural role of programmes such as Civilisation (1969) and Arena (1975 onwards), close analysis of over 25 films and exclusive access to the Arts Council's collection of 480 films, Vision On illuminates the vanguard role that the arts have played in the proud history of public service broadcasting, and attempts to locate their place in today's multi-channel, multi-media world.

January 2007
224 pages

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John Wyver is a media producer with Illuminations and Visiting Professor at the University of Westminster. His television productions have been honoured with a BAFTA, an International Emmy and numerous other awards.

'Wyver places this narrative within the broader context of film, television and the arts in post-war Britain. He is particularly interested in the ways in which broadcast television set about presenting in particular ‘the visual arts' to the public, and to a certain extent contrasts the relatively conservative form and substance of much television arts programming with those Arts Council-funded films which seek to create new forma and aesthetics in dealing with the creative process.'
-Ann Gray, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 2008

'This useful, intelligent and well-researched book discusses films about the arts - mostly the visual arts - and films and programmes about the arts on British television. The author is well qualified to write on these subjects because he has years of experience.'
- John A. Walker, The Art Book

‘John Wyver's superb book [is] the best ever written about British television and one of the most illuminating accounts of British postwar culture … No one today writes as well about television as Wyver, with the same knowledge of the form or its past … This is the kind of cultural criticism we need.’
– David Herman, Prospect 

'At a time when many feel that the arts have been marginalized on TV, comes this timely survey of a strand which has, over the years, offered some of the finest documentary and analysis in the history of the small screen, from Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation to Simon Schama’s Power of Art.'
– Quentin Falk, Academy 

‘John Wyver analyses essential issues in the commissioning, production and distribution of films about the arts. This an exceptional book, driven by the author’s own passion as a programme maker for the ways in which innovative film and digital work can reach new audiences.’
– Sandy Nairne, Director, National Portrait Gallery 

'This volume takes us through a rollercoaster story that swings precariously between the strength on the one hand and the fragility on the other of the arts on television. An invaluable document.'
– Anthony Wall, Series Editor, Arena