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WGBH New Television Workshop: Background of the The New Television Workshop at WGBH-TV Boston

Subjects
Groups
Group dates
1968 - 1993
Group location
Boston, MA
Group
WGBH New Television Workshop

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 "labs." 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's "studio" 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' 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.

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Background of the The New Television Workshop at WGBH-TV Boston. .

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Summary

In the late 1960s KQED, WNET and WGBH-TV established experimental television labs funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts to give artists access to television. Under WGBH producer Fred Barzyk the New Television Workshop and a Rockefeller Artists-in-Residence project began; the Workshop broadcast Medium is the Medium (1969) and Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe built the first video synthesizer there (1969–70). The Workshop opened a Watertown studio in 1974, donated equipment to the Boston Film/Video Foundation in 1978 and was closed by WGBH in 1993.

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Last modified 13 September 2026

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