{"id":5634,"title":"New York Media Group Spins Its Reels in Rochester","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/new-york-media-group-spins-its-reels-rochester","version":"217f23379ad4fb5237105c5b3d58a7345fd64dd4a5da66373c7ed76e53c9a4f9","modified":"2026-09-13T21:52:04.4431463+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Author","name":"Martha Gever"}],"authorKeys":["Geever, Martha"],"subjects":["Texts by Author"],"metadata":[{"label":"Publication","value":"Afterimage","url":null},{"label":"Publisher","value":"Visual Studies Workshop","url":null},{"label":"Date","value":"Summer 1983","url":null},{"label":"Place","value":"Rochester, New York","url":null},{"label":"Volume","value":"11","url":null},{"label":"Issue","value":"1 and 2","url":null},{"label":"ETC archive","value":"ETC1123","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022New York Media Group Spins Its Reels in Rochester.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/new-york-media-group-spins-its-reels-rochester.","publication":"Martha Gever. New York Media Group Spins Its Reels in Rochester. Afterimage. Visual Studies Workshop. Summer 1983.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/5634.ris"},"links":[{"label":"Scanned document","url":"https://archive.org/details/ETC1123","relationship":"linked document; contents not retrieved","contentType":"application/pdf"}],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":11420},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":837}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"\u0022Identity crisis\u0022 is how one member of the New York Media Alliance described the group\u0027s annual meeting held on May 6 and 7 at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester. The lack of consensus which characterized debates on the most basic questions can be traced to two probable causes: the coexistence within the four-year-old Alliance of organizations and individuals with extremely diverse, sometimes conflicting interests; and the precarious finances of many media centers and videomakers, which engenders fierce competition for the public funds which sustain both. Predictably, one of the hottest topics at the meeting was money. Grants, earned income, matching funds, private foundations, cash flow, etc.-money words and financial fantasies-provided the muzak for most of the proceedings. Even a proposal to start a newsletter quickly turned into an elaborate scheme for an expensive but supposedly income-generating computer network. This suggestion was not universally embraced, however. Gerald O\u0027Grady of Media Study/Buffalo counterproposed communication via plain old typewritten, mimeographed pieces of paper. The 30-odd voting members present split on the issue, eventually settling for the low-tech solution while investigating the feasibility of electronic interconnection. Though presented with an agenda of 16 items covering issues as varied as credit ratings, dubbing services, and video installations, only a few of these were actually dealt with and fewer still resolved. The newsletter decision was one of two reached during the meeting. The second-a plan to hold five separate meetings to analyze five basic areas of interest-production, distribution, exhibition, education, and preservationwas adopted as a means to address the Media Alliance\u0027s obvious need for a raison d\u0027etre. One further agenda item, a campaign to recruit new individual members, led some independent producers to question the relevance of the Alliance. Skip Blumberg, a veteran documentary producer, voiced serious reservations about the organization\u0027s effectiveness in representing the interests of individuals. Margot Lewitin, head of New York Women\u0027s Interart Center, came to the Alliance\u0027s defense, as she did a number of times, replying that independents and media centers need to work in concert. However, she did not explain either the mechanisms for such cooperation or the benefits. On certain issues the potential conflict between the Alliance\u0027s two constituent groups became specific. When, following a panel on public access cable TV, artist/member Julie Harrison, urged the Media Alliance to preserve and strengthen public access cable channels by lobbying state and local representatives, Lewitin, who is also the vice-president of the Alliance, cautioned that such a commitment might be \u0022altruistic,\u0022 not in the interest of its organization members. Sounding like a corporate manager, she asked, \u0022What can organizations get back from public access?\u0022 The often problematic relationship between individuals and institutions was scrutinized further but not particularly clarified in a panel discussion devoted to that subject. Each panelist, with the exception of film and videomaker Tony Conrad, spoke only about her or his own experience. For example, Carol Brandenburg, the executive producer of WNET\u0027s TV Lab and the president of the Alliance gave a concise but oversimplified and somewhat defensive account of the Lab\u0027s 11-year evolution, glossing over various controversial policies and practices. (Over the years, there have been disputes over ownership of work produced at the Lab, payments to artists, and editorial control, giving the Lab a negative image for many video artists.) Panel moderator Kit Fitzgerald asked, more or less rhetorically, if the role of media centers should be reevaluated since video artists now own quantities of equipment (she didn\u0027t name names, though). Some don\u0027t, however, and a few of these are planning to set up the Production Facilities Project, an \u0022artists-only editing center\u0022 to provide postproduction equipment and space at less than the going rate. Emily Armstrong, one of the initiators of PFP, did not outline the criteria which will be applied to prospective users, but instead concentrated on the venture\u0027s financial outlook, which is pretty good if a New York State Council on the Arts grant augmenting income from artist/subscribers materializes. What will become of media centers if artists organize their own production houses? Matthew Geller, an individual member as well as a partner in PFP, asked media centers to become producers for \u0022major works.\u0022 \u0022It\u0027s a drain on your creative energy to be your own producer,\u0022 he complained, implying that a division of labor, separating the artists\u0027 domain of \u0022creativity\u0022 from less glamorous production chores, should be developed. Speaking in very different terms, Tony Conrad pointed out that media centers function as links between artists and their communities. Conrad was, I believe, the only participant to mention the existence of minority and women producers and audiences. His comments were generally ignored, however, and discussions returned to the bottom line. If the money-making scenarios described by participants in the \u0022earned income\u0022 panel sounded grandiose (a $1.2-million post-production facility at the Women\u0027s Interart Center, for instance), the financial panic which engendered them can be largely attributed to changes at NYSCA and the National Endowment for the Arts (as well as the expansion of the field). John Giancola, the director of NYSCA\u0027s media program, often contributed information about and interpretations of state funding policies and patterns. Some of his messages could be read as contradictory, however. During conversations about earned income, he advised media center administrators not to lose sight of an \u0022alternative vision of media.\u0022 But later, after Ralph Hocking from the Experimental Television Center in Owego told about refusing a proffered $200,000 corporate grant for fear of strings, Giancola reminded the group that diversified funding, which in most cases Means increased profit-making activities, improves their chances for a bigger chunk of public support. The Media Alliance\u0027s financial future is perhaps the most tenuous of all. Of its $21,000 1983 operating budget, $10,000 has been spent, leaving enough to employ the organization\u0027s director, Robin White, for another six months and pay some bills. The Alliance survives primarily on NYSCA funds: $20,000 was granted the Media Alliance in 1982-83, $10,000 outright and $10,000 to be matched. The group only managed to raise an additional $5,500. Whether NYSCA will continue to support the Media Alliance at this level will probably be determined when the media panel convenes in July. Even with another year\u0027s funding, the success or failure of the Alliance\u0027s programs will ultimately prove its viability. Hopefully the outcome of the five projected meetings will be more conclusive than last year\u0027s still incomplete survey of its 32 member organizations and will lead to a clear definition of the group\u0027s purposes and functions. Without that, and some meaningful programs, the Media Alliance will soon be eclipsed by organizations such as the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers and the National Alliance of Media Arts Centers. Those are my conclusions after sitting through the 1983 annual meeting, but more general comments seem appropriate, since rereading earlier articles on the Alliance produces a feeling of deja vu. Two years ago [Summer 1981] Afterimage reported: \u0022The Alliance reelected its current board of directors.\u0022 This time three-quarters of the new board are repeaters. Since the 1981-82 board (again many of the same names can be counted) was directed to \u0022pursue key topics for Media Alliance action-cable advocacy, consortium approaches to fundraising and equipment, profit versus non-profit status for organizations, and the development of media literature,\u0022 and since none of these actions (except, perhaps, the second to last) were taken, one must seriously question the chances that the latest mandate-to ascertain and carry out an updated Alliance agenda-will be realized. And one must ask if this organization has not descended into a state of premature senility, given to disconnected utterances, suffering from paralysis and lapses of memory. One important, perhaps the central, lapse concerns the Alliance\u0027s collective interest in affecting the decisions made by public agencies, primarily NYSCA, but potentially public television, the public part of cable TV, the FCC, the New York State legislature, the U.S. Congress, etc. The original Media Alliance meetings were the direct result of a series of severe cuts in NYSCA funding given to six upstate media organizations. These and other groups banded together and challenged NYSCA\u0027s action and some of the Council\u0027s guidelines. As a result, some changes were made in the system and the blow to the affected organizations was softened. Five years later, the possibility that the Media Alliance might counterbalance NYSCA\u0027s influence seems remote. Instead, now that the Alliance is itself a grantee, will it dare bit the hand that feeds it? And what about public TV? Are the Media Alliance members who have benefitted from PBS or CPB support willing to rock the boat and push for more diverse definitions of the concept \u0022public\u0022 and a more open system? And will the Media Alliance heed Julie Harrison\u0027s (and others\u0027) call for Alliance support for more and better cable access? Frankly, I doubt the organization will take up any of these issues. Rather, it will probably continue to lose its politically-inclined members and attract, instead, those developing a professional profile, interested in \u0022networking,\u0022 i.e., making good connections. As the stakes in the non-profit media world get higher, the \u0022alternatives\u0022 are becoming indistinguishable from the mainstream. so-called \u0022alternative financial structures,\u0022 which many videomakers and organizations seem anxious to adopt, look curiously like miniature versions of the Hollywood image industry. The powerful medium of television exerts a strange influence on its poor relation, independent video. At once seduced by that power, prestige, and wealth and repulsed by its crass commercialism and inanity, -media artists and administrators often seem intent on replicating that which they reject in their rhetoric. Now, in 1983, instead of working to create an enlarged public sphere for independent media, the Media Alliance, with a few dissenting members, seems in thrall to this marketplace mentality. As a final thought, then, let me borrow Tony Conrad\u0027s comments, made during the recent meeting: \u0022[The film/media community] does stand in an opposition role to what is constituted as art as a market.... Media culture must be, in some respects, a conspiracy against capital.\u0022 The implications deserve serious attention from the community Conrad refers to, not least of all the Media Alliance. Otherwise-especially if the Alliance remains fascinated with high finance and its accoutrements, e.g., spending $133 on padded chairs for this meeting-the organization can only continue to move toward irrelevance. Conrad also noted the urgent need for a pragmatic, \u0022unresolved discourse.\u0022 My observations and remarks are intended as a contribution to that discourse.","offset":0,"nextOffset":null,"totalCharacters":11420,"complete":true},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}