The Vanishing Vision: The Inside Story of Public Television

The Vanishing Vision: The Inside Story of Public Television by Day, James. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780520086593.

This spirited, first-ever history of public television offers an insiders account of its topsy-turvy, forty-year odyssey. James Day, a founder of San Franciscos KQED and a past president of New Yorks WNET, chronicles public televisions fascinating evolution from its inauspicious roots in the 1950s to its strong, fiercely debated presence in contemporary culture. The Vanishing Vision provides a vivid and often amusing behind-the-screens history. Day tells how a program producer, desperate to locate a family willing to live with television cameras for seven months, borrowed a dime―and a suggestion―from a blind date and telephoned the Louds of Santa Barbara. The result was the mesmerizing twelve-hour documentary, An American Family. Day relates how Big Bird and his friends were created to spice up Sesame Street when test runs showed a flagging interest in the programs "live-action" segments. And he describes how Frieda Hennock, the first woman appointed to the FCC, overpowered the resistance of her male colleagues to lay the foundation for public television. Along the way, Day identifies the particular forces that have shaped public television. The result, in his view, is a Byzantine bureaucracy kept on a leash by an untrusting Congress, with a fragmented leadership that lacks a clearly defined mission in todays multimedia environment. Public televisions "democratic" structure of over 300 stations stifles boldness and innovation while absorbing money needed for national programming. Day calls for a bold rethinking of public televisions mission, advocating a system that is adequately funded and independent of government, one capable of countering commercial televisions "lowest-common-denominator" approach with a full range of substantive programs, comedy as well as culture, entertainment as well as information.