Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited

by Deirdre Boyle

Before the Internet, camcorders, and hundred-channel cable- systems—predating the Information Superhighway and talk of cyber-democracy—there was guerilla television. Part of the larger alternative media tide which swept the country in the late sixties, guerilla television emerged when the arrival of lightweight, affordable consumer video equipment made it possible for ordinary people to make their own television. Fueled both by outrage at the day's events and by the writings of people like Marshall McLuhan, Tom Wolfe, and Hunter S. Thompson, the movement gained a manifesto in 1971, when Michael Shamberg and the raindance Corp. published Guerilla Television. As framed in this quixotic text, the goal of the video guerilla was nothing less than a reshaping of the structure of information in America.

In Subject to Change, Deidre Boyle tells the fascinating story of the first TV generation's dream of remaking television and their frustrated attempts at democratizing the medium. Interweaving the narratives of three very different video collectives from the 1970s—TVTV, Broadside TV, and University Community Video—Boyle offers a thought-provoking account of an earlier electronic utopianism, one with significant implications for today's debates over free speech, public discourse, and the information explosion.

304 pages, Paperback

First published March 27, 1997

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to reread Deirdre Boyle's excellent history of the small-format video 'revolution' to remind me about this important part of my own history, since I'm writing a memoir that overlaps with some of the events and people she chronicles. The opening paragraphs is as good a general overview of the times and circumstances that gave rise to what became known as guerilla television. The bulk of the book delivers a granular history of three groups that she deems as representative of the main strands of the movement, i.e., TVTV, which pioneered a new first-person kind of documentary journalism, and was the most commercial of the lot; University Community Video in Minneapolis, which exemplified a grassroots engagement with specific local communities and their issues, pioneering a form of unofficial government feedback loop; and Broadside TV, embedded deep within the Appalachian community, as a kind of alternative to broadcast. I knew and worked with folks in all of these groups. More will be revealed.

[Medio Mutante · Rating 3 out of 5]

read this as required reading in a class taught by allen rucker of tvtv (one of the groups highlighted within) - he expanded so much on the text in class but the book is excellent on its own if you have any interest in this era of pioneering video

[Mfalco65 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a fascinating exploration of the rise of a new media form. As video became more portable, these were the pioneers who reinvented the form and created a new method of telling stories outside of the mainstream media. It is tremendously helpful in the context of the emergence of digital forms of media.

[Inggita · Rating 4 out of 5]

wow, what a historical trip US video and TV activists took that Deirdre chronicled! it's like Indonesia's reformasi with cameras...