TVTV Video Revolutionaries explores the rise and fall of Top Value Television (“TVTV”), a band of merry video makers who, in the 1970s, took the just-introduced portable video camera and went out to document the world.
In those days, there were only three TV networks, using giant studio cameras, and no one had ever seen a portable camera stuck in their face. Because the technology was so new, there were no rules about how to use it or what to make. So these new video journalists used the portapaks to make format-bending satirical shows about whatever interested them — from the 1972 Republican Convention to an expose of the 15-year-old guru called “Lord of the Universe” to the Steelers and Cowboys partying hard the night before Super Bowl X.
