There are far too many crass rants on either side of the dumbing down debate. Vision On is refreshingly different. It articulates a firm theory backed up by a detailed exploration of programmes from over the last six decades. Wyver gets your passions rising as he analyses what used to be on the box, who funded it and what it was like. This makes for a far more intelligent discussion of the need for sharp TV than the usual grumblings from grumpy old men, or those on the opposite site - the ‘young pretenders’ - the other old men that run TV who pretend to be young, cutting edge and complacently claim everything they make is great.

After a brief look at the prehistory of the arts on film, the first chapter charts their appearance on television from 1951-82. The Festival of Britain marked the end of war time austerity and showcased a sense of possibility for the future. Television had been around for less than a decade and the Arts Council in place for six years. It was a pioneering period. Three figures, producer John Read, bureaucrat Kenneth Clark and director Ken Russell, set the format for future programmes: that of the lecture, the encounter and the drama. With a considered exploration of programmes including Monitor, Arena, and The South Bank Show, careful analysis of over 25 films, and exclusive access to the Arts Council’s collection of 480 films, Vision On well illustrates that the arts were central to the remit of public service broadcasting.

Wyver is highly excitable about the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, when he praises the possibilities promised for arts broadcasting during the 1980s. This was primarily due to Channel 4 working often with the Arts Council. It was a time when television was at its ‘richest, most diverse and most challenging’ (p47). Culture, partly due to chief executive Jeremy Issacs and his commissioning editor for arts Michael Kustow, was central to the channel’s output, and this period was influenced was by the radical filmmakers of the 1970s who had formed ideas about the need for innovation and independence. Major cultural broadcasting events included: the Mahabarata; twelve operas a year; transmissions from Sadler’s Wells of Pina Bausch’s contemporary performances with the Wuppertal Dance Theatre; Sinfonietta which explored chamber music of the twentieth century in films made by six directors; and Deep Roots Music, which traced the development of reggae from its Jamaican origins, to name just a fraction of the high quality work produced.

Twenty-five years later and we see a dramatic decrease in quality and quantity. Just think of ‘Wank Week’, the shoddy scheduling of Newsnight Review (now a whole 15 minutes long); and programmes like Operatunity - a reality TV show where the music doesn’t matter. This is populist programming which isn’t popular. It’s arts programming that is scared of art. What happened? Wyver demonstrates this shift isn’t simply down to a new generation or a major change of personnel. Many controllers today were involved in good TV twenty years ago. Something more profound has taken place.

While Wyver is far stronger making the case that things have changed than in exploring why, he is careful not to fall into the trap of explaining everything in terms of the market, technological changes, or public appetite. He firmly critiques the programmers for suffering a crisis of confidence in both the possibility of high quality arts television and for thinking the audience is not capable of getting it: a stultifying combination of low expectations. In response we get hand-wringing from producers on the perils of elitism and alienated youth, which suggests they think the audience don’t deserve high quality art on TV because it’s too difficult and not much cop anyway.

Wyver’s final thoughts are with the future and the opportunities opened up by new technology that brings affordable equipment and access to programmes never seen before, opening up new possibilities to a wider range of people. He is right: this can only be a good thing. As he reminds us, when John Read made the TV series Henry Moore on the sculptor in 1951, there was one TV channel in the UK. Now this film is online for all to see and many more have access to sophisticated equipment to make something better. This optimistic note is reassuring, but unless we tackle the broader crisis of confidence in art and challenge the contempt for the public, it is unlikely we will be able to make the most of these tools.

The book opens and closes with the impact the TV series Civilisation had on Wyver’s life as a 14 year old boy. But he doesn’t want simply to try and repeat this experience. Vision On is no lament for days gone by, but makes a strong case for reclaiming the commitment to high quality arts programming of the past. Dismissing people like Wyver for being nostalgic, as the defenders of the status quo try to, evades the lessons that could be learned from the past and applied to the future, a trap Wyver thankfully won’t fall into. Just because there wasn’t a golden age doesn’t mean there couldn’t be.