New Ellijay Television – An Example of modern DIY TV
Television is the medium of modern culture. Media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously posited “The Medium is the Message”, meaning that the way a message is distributed carries as much weight as the message itself. Since it’s inception roughly 100 years ago, Television has transformed and reshaped the world but it has been, with limited exception, a read only medium. Many people watch television,but only a very few people make television.
The people who make television, through their access to distribution networks, their copyright monopolies, and their vast budgets, exercise an astounding level of influence in modern society. Elections are won or lost, lives spared or taken, based on the influence of television broadcasts.
And today, the vast majority of these broadcasts come from an ever shrinking number of companies, and they seem most interested in rehashing the same stories again and again. We are not told new stories, we are rarely introduced to new characters. We are given another police procedural or another gritty reboot of a once beloved franchise. We are told this is sufficient.
To paraphrase those who came before us (see History later in this text): The Ecological Landscape of the modern videosphere is incredibly unhealthy. It lacks diversity in creators, in distributors, in distribution mechanisms, and in content.
If Television is the medium of modern culture, and the television ecosystem is unhealthy, what does that say for modern culture? Simply put, until something significant changes, our culture will grow more polarized, extreme, and stagnant.
We can only restore balance and diversity to the ecology of the videosphere by rejecting the status quo of traditional television and building something new. If you’ve read this far, You are the vanguard of the television revolution.
Our species will survive neither by totally rejecting nor unconditionally embracing technology—but by humanizing it: by allowing people access to the informational tools they need to shape and reassert control over their lives”
– Radical Software Vol 1 Issue 1
What follows:
- Guerrilla Television: DIY TV in the 70s
- Shot on Video: DIY TV in the age of VHS
- Jamming the Media: DIY TV in the age of the multimedia CD
- Like and Subscribe: The false promise of youtube
- How to make DIY TV?
- How to distribute DIY TV?
- What to DIY?