I ONCE took part in an experiment in time travel - of sorts. I went round to a family's house in Glasgow and we spent the whole night watching television shows from the 1970s. Starsky and Hutch. Basil Brush. The Generation Game. Dick Emery.

The idea was to explore whether television is as good as it used to be, and the same question has been on my mind this week ahead of the British Film Institute's celebration of the 60th anniversary of ITV. The BFI has just shown all the ITV shows that were broadcast on the evening of March 22, 1964 and it was a pretty rum collection.

Some of it will be familiar to you; some of it you might have to strain your memory banks to recall. Right at the heart of the schedule was Sunday Night at the London Palladium, presented of course (even though this was the long-ago dawn of commercial television) by Bruce Forsyth. There were also a few American imports, such as 77 Sunset Strip, the long-running show a team of private detectives, and The Beverley Hillbillies. The BFI also showed the news reports, including one about a promising young boxer called Cassius Clay.

What these programmes (and the old 70s ones I watched with the Harper family in Glasgow) seemed to prove is that almost everything about television has improved in 50 years, but several things in particular are better than they used to be.

The first are the attitudes and prejudices of those that make television. Watching the programmes from the 60s and 70s, what strikes you again and again is the lack of female characters and, oh look, there's a girl in a bikini for no apparent reason, and there's another. Television was rather sexist and it isn't so much now. Its approach to gay characters and presenters is also a million times better than it was.

On the whole, the writing on television has also improved. Much of the drama in the 60s and 70s was on a quick turnaround and was cheaply made, whereas much of the drama now is expensive and time is spent getting the scripts right. Our television channels also rely much less than they did 50 years ago on American imports – there is much more British drama that is very good indeed.

The other, and most important, improvement on the 1960s and 70s is, to use a favourite word of the 1980s: choice. Imagine having to sit down on March 22, 1964 and having just two choices: Bruce Forsyth on ITV or Songs of Praise on the BBC. I suppose it would have to be Brucie, at a push.

The situation now is entirely different. One memory that lingers with me from my 1970s experiment is the oldest son of the family switching the old DVDs off and returning to the vast choice of the modern day. He was a documentary buff and I remember him scrolling down all the choices: Discovery, National Geographic, and so on.

Not only is this choice exhilarating, it's getting bigger all the time. For the first time this year, the National Television Awards will include programmes made for Amazon and Netflix, which is hardly surprising because the internet channels have been producing some of the best drama available. It's a sign that television is changing, but it's an encouraging sign too that it is better – much, better – than it used to be.