TVTV

TVTV in Miami during the 1972 Presidential Conventions. From left: Allen Rucker, Anda Korsts, Tom Weinberg, Skip Blumberg, Michael Couzins (behind Blumberg), Judy Newman, Steve Christiansen, Chuck Kennedy, Ira Schneider (kneeling), Martha Miller, Michael Shamberg, Chip Lord, (kneeling), Andy Mann, Nancy Cain, Hudson Marquez, Jody Siebert (sitting), Curtis Schreier, Joan Logue, and Jim Newman. Absent: Megan Williams. Courtesy of Allen Rucker.

Top Value Television (TVTV) was founded in 1972 by Michael Shamberg, Megan Williams, and Allen Rucker (with a handful of associated artists) as a guerrilla video collective based in San Francisco, California. The group developed from ties to San Francisco Bay Area and New York City arts collectives such as Ant Farm (of which TVTV co-founders Hudson Marquez, Chip Lord, Curtis Schreier, and Doug Michels were members), Videofreex, and Raindance (of which Shamberg was a member). Independent producers such as Wendy Apple and Paul Goldsmith provided essential technical skills. The group was influential in bridging the gap between 1970s counterculture and broadcast television. (Source)

TVTV pioneered the use of independent video based on wanting to change society and have a good time inventing new and then-revolutionary media, ½" Sony Portapak video equipment, and later embracing the ¾" video format. Shamberg was author of the 1971 "do-it-yourself" video production manual Guerrilla Television. (Source)

Work, archives

• TVTV in Media Burn Archive
• Preserving Guerilla Television: TVTV, BAMPFA, University of California. Digital collections. [1]
• TVTV in Video Data Bank
• Top Value Television papers in Online Archives California

Documentary films about TVTV

• VTR: TVTV, 1975, 31 min.
• TVTV: Video Revolutionaries, dir. Paul Goldsmith, 2018, 82 min. Film website. IMDB.

Links

• TVTVNow.com [2]
• Alternative Convention: Top Value Television’s Four More Years, exhibition, HartHouse, U Toronto, 2021.
• Wikipedia