{"id":4771,"title":"Independent Video: A Complete Guide to the Physics, Operation, and Application of the New Television for the Student, The Artist and for Community TV","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/history-woodstock-community-video-ken-marsh-1974","version":"b8978af8314923fa9b9d88b1fe60b426f568e1a892ae82ec7e25ee96f2c4048c","modified":"2011-06-23T18:41:15+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Author","name":"Ken Marsh"}],"authorKeys":["Marsh, Ken"],"subjects":[],"metadata":[{"label":"Publisher","value":"Straight Arrow Books","url":null},{"label":"Place","value":"San Francisco, California","url":null},{"label":"ETC archive","value":"ETC0614","url":null},{"label":"Group dates","value":"1972 - 1978","url":null},{"label":"Group location","value":"Woodstock, New York","url":null},{"label":"Group","value":"Woodstock Community Video","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022History of Woodstock Community Video,  Ken Marsh (1974).\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2011. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/history-woodstock-community-video-ken-marsh-1974.","publication":"Ken Marsh. Independent Video: A Complete Guide to the Physics, Operation, and Application of the New Television for the Student, The Artist and for Community TV. Straight Arrow Books. 1974.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/4771.ris"},"links":[{"label":"Scanned document","url":"https://archive.org/details/ETC0614","relationship":"linked document; contents not retrieved","contentType":"application/pdf"},{"label":"Woodstock Community Video: A Brief History","url":"#Woodstock Community Video: A Brief","relationship":"record body link","contentType":null},{"label":"Woodstock Community Video The Artists\u0027 TV Lab","url":"#Woodstock Community Video The Artists\u0027 TV","relationship":"record body link","contentType":null}],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":29384},{"name":"abstract","source":"recorded publication abstract","generated":false,"characters":128},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":600},{"name":"archive_summary","source":"existing ETC archive summaries: ETC0614","generated":false,"characters":128}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"Founded by Ken Marsh. Members included Barbara Buckner, Bob Dacy, Gary Hill, Steven Kolpan, Elaine Milosh. WCV was interested in alternative programming for cable, and served as a production center for cable programs. WCV began Artists TV Lab, which moved to Rhinebeck in 1976. From 1975-77 WCV presented Woodstock Video Expovision, a festival of NYS media artists. 1972-75 Tobe Carey served as Media Services Coordinator. Woodstock Community Video: A Brief History - Ken Marsh 1974 Excerpted from Independent Video: A Complete Guide to the Physics, Operation, and Application of the New Television for the Student, The Artist and for Community TV, by Ken Marsh (1974) Woodstock Community Video The Artists\u0027 TV Lab Ken Marsh, Director undated c. 1976 Woodstock Community Video: A Brief History - Ken Marsh 1974 In 1970, two years after TV making became accessible to people outside the TV industry, an alternate media movement emerged and the decentralizing of media resources began. Using \u00BD inch video systems, independent organizations produced programs about people and events either not covered or unfairly treated by the mass media. Unable to negotiate with the media establishment and denied access to broadcast TV, they set up video theatres, using schoolrooms and even living rooms as local information centers to show tapes on such subjects as alternate life styles, communes, liberation activities of various communities, as well as raps with artists and educators. Woodstock Community Video (WCV) is an outgrowth of one of those centers-People\u0027s Video Theatre (PVT) which was set up by Elliot Glass and myself. When first setting up PVT in a New York City loft for viewing tapes, and in turn taping views, we defined the following objectives which we believed to be essential to a community video resource: to provide people with a medium for exposing their goods, services, and ideas; to stimulate community dialogue; to develop community video journalism; to provide a public-access production facility; and to establish a video library. Four newly-begun video groups-Videofreex, Raindance, Global Village, and People\u0027s Video Theatre-demonstrated new ways in which media could function in the hands of people who felt either cut off from the viewpoint of mass media, or who were attempting to control their own information to prevent its distortion. In the latter part of 1970, the movement received some publicity from a not overly sympathetic press. An article in New York Magazine dubbed the movement \u0022guerilla TV.\u0022 Within months, Newsweek reported on some of the more sensational aspects, which included a British video group\u0027s (TVX) takeover of the David Frost show. The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) provided grants to the four video groups operating in New York during that time. People\u0027s Video Theatre had been functioning successfully in Greenwich Village, drawing tourist audiences during weekend nights. But attempts to reach the local community were not successful. Cable TV with its public-access channels was beginning to provide a means for the dissemination of independently-produced TV, but those systems\u0027 penetration in the city was uneven and minimal. The essence of alternate media, programmer/audience interaction, appeared to me to be unrealizable in the big-city context. So in the fall of 1971, Elaine Milosh and I moved to Woodstock, New York to set up a community video resource there. Woodstock is a community of about 6,000 people located in the Catskill Mountains of the mid-Hudson region of New York State. It has had an operating cable system since 1965, supplying about 1,500 subscribers with reception of mainly New York City TV. A relatively small system (but with a potential to double), Woodstock\u0027s cable, then owned by NBC, is a part of Kingston Cablevision, a system with over 10,000 subscribers. Local origination programming was being provided for the Kingston system, but Woodstock with its separate headend received no local fare. Woodstock has a low population density with an approximate average of 25 homes along every mile. The cable industry takes the position that economically they cannot survive with too many under 40 homes along every mile. Thus, the cable system has only been developed in the high-density areas of the town. The town has a sizable population of longhairs, a bedroom community for IBMers working in nearby Kingston, a rural citizenry with roots in the early Hugenot-Dutch settlements, and an artist colony established over 75 years ago. It has two weekly newspapers and is connected to the larger region by AM radio originating in Kingston and by that city\u0027s daily paper: Our arrival in Woodstock coincided with the local elections, and so our first project involved taping all the candidates running for local office, playing those tapes back on the streets, and in turn taping the reactions and comments of the voters on the issues. For some eight days before the election we set monitors on trashcans in front of various stores along the main street (from which we obtained power) and made and displayed tapes. The candidates of all but one party readily participated, while it took a vocal request at a public meeting for those of the holdout party to finally agree to join in. Within a few months of that event, we published a pamphlet to inform people about cable TV in general, the local system in particular, and about the potentials of community video: \u0022. . .community programming is a tool for vitalizing communications. . .in a time of complex and varying social values and problems. Our local TV. . .can provide the town with its own message-making facilities. . .a community cable channel. . .low-cost advertising for local businesses. . .video programs in schools, churches, social groups, etc.\u0022 The pamphlet also outlined a plan of action requesting that the town government help citizens obtain cable service where there wasn\u0027t any, and that it provide space for a community channel studio in Town Hall. Other institutions were asked to participate in creating programs as part of their activities. And the public at large was asked to support the development of community video by letting the cable company know that they wanted a community channel as well as support for its operations. The pamphlet was distributed in early 1972, prior to a project which included a 12-week series of video shows held in cooperation with the Woodstock Artists Association, in its gallery in the center of town. Each show consisted of a half-hour-long video magazine on local events and issues, followed by a live forum discussion and taping of the audience. During this period, we were approaching Kingston Cablevision and the Town Board to start the ball rolling. And in some instances the weekly show served as a public meeting to deal with our campaign. For example, At one show attended by a member of the Town Board and the cable company\u0027s program director, the initial arrangements were made to test our 1/2-inch equipment to see if it could be used for cablecasting. Within three months the company completed the tests and by the end of May 1972, WCV did its first two-hour, once-a-week (a limit set by the cable company) cablecast from the system\u0027s headend located on a nearby mountainside. Patience and persistence are prerequisites for working with town governments and cable companies. The local government took until January 1973 to act. It set up a committee on cable TV to study and make recommendations for a new cable franchise to be negotiated in the fall. Also at that time, as a result of months of urging, the cable company offered to install an origination line at Town Hall so that programming could be cablecast from the center of town. With operations based in town, programming could be expanded, and cablecast at any time of day. It then took some eight months to come to an agreement. The cable company took three months to prepare a document it wanted the town to sign, three more months for the town officials to consider and reconsider whether they really wanted it, and another couple of months redrawing the document so it was agreeable to both parties. Meanwhile, every week on Wednesday night at 7:30 pm WCV Channel 6 has gone on cable with live and taped programming: mini Documentaries, news, talk shows, Town Board meetings, election information, and occasional outside productions from other communities. Some interesting questions emerged during the Town Board\u0027s deliberations on the desirability of a town-government-based community cable channel. Valid concerns were expressed regarding programming content, access, and responsibility for these things. With sensitivities directed toward their electorate, the Board members looked dimly on possible association with the expression of extreme political views, or the exposure of off-beat life styles which could offend the more conservative viewers. Our response to this took two forms: In setting up Woodstock Community Video as a non-profitmaking, tax exempt, educational organization, it was decided that it have a board of directors composed of the broadest possible spectrum of interests represented in the town. One of its major responsibilities would be to guide the selection of content and to ensure fairness in access. Secondly, Marco Vassi, a writer working in video, provided us with a written document which has been accepted as the guideline for operating the community channel by our Board and the local government: \u0022. . .Responsibility for a full-time open channel requires total commitment to the principles of accurate information, technical competence, artistic integrity, and good taste. \u0022Our aim is to produce and exhibit tapes and live programming which is vivid and coherent; the goal is a multiplicity of voices, each distinct and strong, rather than an imposed conformity. We believe that the purpose of local origination is to give the community the opportunity to look at itself from the inside, thus coming to terms with its complexity of values and problems. \u0022As a channel we have no mandate or desire for censorship. In fact, we will be. . .beneficial to the community only to the degree that we are free to experiment with form and content .... \u0022We recognize, however, three areas of influence and restraint: legal requirements, broad community feedback, and the variety of sources of program material. a) Legal requirements: These involve the regulations of the FCC and other governmental agencies, the stipulations of the town-authorized cable operator(s), and the general laws involving libel; through our attorneys we will remain informed about these jurisdictions; b) Broad community feedback: We will exercise sensitivity to general reactions to individual programs and types of programs; ...we are pledged to keep the channel from engendering alienation in the community; c) Sources for program material: As moderately priced, easily operated equipment becomes more prevalent in schools, churches, special-interest groups, and among individuals, the base of our programming. will spread to allow participation by everyone in the community, although, at the core of the station will remain a nexus of managers, producers; and. WCV Board members, who will be responsible for quality control. \u0022We shall maintain a weekly schedule to be announced several times each broadcast day, and to appear in the local newspapers. The programs will be described in enough detail to afford viewers full discretion in their choice of program material. \u0022Ultimately, there is no substitute for good faith. A local channel, operating almost entirely from local resources, and available twenty-four hours a day, is an invaluable means for processing the information flow which keeps the town vital. In addition, it is a forum for teachers, artists, politicians, merchants, and the general citizen. To keep this channel open in such a way that aids us all in the problems of survival, that serves","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":29384,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}