"An archival treasure and a lively read....Boyle writes with both compassion and crystal-clear insight.
This revolution was not about just technology...it was also about people....Boyle has caught this all beautifully."
--Choice
"A fascinating and sometimes amusing history of the early video pioneers that offers astute analysis of why
their utopian dreams were doomed to fail....Boyle's talents as a media historian stem from her ability to blend
rich detail with a broader social, economic, and policy context....Everyone who cares about the politics of television
will find Subject to Change a gripping and relevant lesson from the past."
--The Independent
"Guerrilla television was a brief, remarkable phenomenon. In its carefully-documented attention to detail,
Subject to Change is an important addition to our understanding of a period of social ferment, and of the history
of television."
--Pat Aufderheide, Women's Review of Books
"In the 1970s, during the astonishing rise of video as an independent medium of expression, Deirdre Boyle
was there as a gung-ho participant. In the 1990s she is still there, now as a clear-eyed, amazingly meticulous
chronicler of a turbulent period of media history."
--Erik Barnouw, author, Media Marathon
Subject to Change is destined to change the subject of documentary history. Boyle astutely navigates the virtually
unmined, volatile territory of guerrilla television: new technologies, media collectives, organizational in-fighting,
funding struggles, network deals, the counterculture, the new left, cable access, budgets, community media, actual
productions, editing debates, and the cast of major and minor players. textual and social analysis of guerrilla
video. Her book unfolds a riveting story of the paradox of hope and pessimism latent in all new technologies."
--Patricia R. Zimmermann, author, Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film
Oxford University Press Web Site, May, 2000
Summary
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.
Carries far-ranging implications for the future of free speech and public discourse in the US.
A book with far-ranging implications for the future of free speech and public discourse in the US.
Carries far-ranging implications for the future of free speech and public discourse in the US.
