Vision On
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Vision On was a British children's television programme, shown on BBC 1 from 1964 to 1977, It was designed to appeal to deaf as well as hearing viewers. Conceived by BBC producers Ursula Eason and Patrick Dowling, it replaced a monthly series called For the Deaf, and was intended to reflect changes in the education of deaf children, placing an emphasis upon communication and interaction rather than image-based storytelling alone. The main presenter was Pat Keysell, who had combined an acting career with teaching deaf children. Keysell was usually the only presenter to address the audience directly. She was later joined by Tony Hart, who encouraged viewers to send in their paintings to the Vision On gallery, which showed viewers' paintings in sequence in the middle of the programme. Other presenters at various times included Ben Benison, and Sylvester McCoy, both of whom specialized in mime in the series, and Wilf Makepeace Lunn, who appeared as an eccentric inventor of equally eccentric machines. David Cleveland appeared in filmed sequences as "the Prof".
The title Vision On was a reference to the illuminated sign above the recording studio at the BBC, which showed when the cameras were live. The title animation in later series showed the words "Vision On" in script joining up with their mirror image to form an animated character.
The series ended in 1977 when it was thought its mode of addressing deaf children had in its own way become outdated. Equipment for decoding and displaying Ceefax (enabling the use of closed captioned subtitling) became more easily available, and so deaf children could enjoy a wider range of children's television. Tony Hart took the gallery concept to a spin-off art series, Take Hart and later Hart Beat. Vision On's last producer, Clive Doig took its visual style on to his later series Jigsaw and Eureka.
Many episodes of Vision On featured short animations with Tony Hart interacting with the claymation character Morph, produced by the Aardman Animation team.
References
Radio Times, 1964-1977
External links
- Vision On tribute site (http://www.its-prof-again.co.uk/vision_on.htm)