{"id":4768,"title":"WGBH New Television Workshop: Background of the The New Television Workshop at WGBH-TV Boston","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/background-new-television-workshop-wgbh-tv-boston","version":"01c9398b126678264ab34a52a0f529c854ed6e85a643a4bf62058b73904dd760","modified":"2026-09-13T21:52:08.1988609+00:00","credits":[],"authorKeys":[],"subjects":["Groups"],"metadata":[{"label":"Group dates","value":"1968 - 1993","url":null},{"label":"Group location","value":"Boston, MA","url":null},{"label":"Group","value":"WGBH New Television Workshop","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Background of the The New Television Workshop at WGBH-TV Boston.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/background-new-television-workshop-wgbh-tv-boston.","publication":"Background of the The New Television Workshop at WGBH-TV Boston. .","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/4768.ris"},"links":[],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":2273},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":586}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"Beginning in the late 1960s three public television stations -- KQED in San Francisco, WNET in New York and WGBH-TV Boston began to give artists access to television technology through their experimental \u0022labs.\u0022 Funded primarily by the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, these labs allowed artists to work with expensive equipment and skilled technicians to develop personal approaches to the television medium. Early experiments and projects under the direction of Fred Barzyk, a WGBH producer, led to the creation of the New Television Workshop and the first Rockefeller supported Artists-in-Residence Project in 1967. In 1969 the program Medium is the Medium was broadcast nationally. It included works by Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik, Otto Piene, James Seawright, Thomas Tadlock, and Aldo Tambellini. Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe created the first video synthesizer at the Workshop during 1969-70. In 1972 a live four-hour broadcast, The Very First On the Air Half Inch Videotape Festival Ever, featured video works made with half-inch portapak equipment. In 1974 the Workshop\u0027s \u0022studio\u0022 began life in an abandoned movie house in Watertown, Massachusetts, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. Over the next four years more than one hundred artists were given access to low-cost video equipment and editing facilities, free from the pressure of conventional television production scheduling and broadcast requirements. The work produced was broadcast in programs such as Video: the New Wave, which aired nationally on PBS and the series Artists\u0027 Showcase, which aired for five years. In 1978, the Workshop gave up its studio, donating its equipment to the Boston Film/Video Foundation, a fledgling media access center. The New Television Workshop continued to produce artists video, through the Contemporary Art Television Fund (1983), a collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and through the series New Television, a collaboration with WNET. In 1993, WGBH closed the New Television Workshop, marking the end of a twenty-five year period of innovation in American television.","offset":0,"nextOffset":null,"totalCharacters":2273,"complete":true},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}