TVTV (short forTop Value Television) was aSan Francisco-based video collective that produceddocumentary video works usingguerrilla art techniques.
The group was founded in 1972 byAllen Rucker,Michael Shamberg,Tom Weinberg,Hudson Marquez, andMegan Williams.[1][2][3] Shamberg was the author of the 1971 "do-it-yourself" video production manualGuerrilla Television
TVTV pioneered the use of independent video based on the new and then-revolutionary media, ½"SonyPortapak video equipment,[4][5] later embracing the ¾" video format.
In 1975 the group left San Francisco for Los Angeles, where it took up a contract withPBS to shootSupervisions, a series of short tapes on television history.[6]
The group disbanded in 1979. Their last production wasTVTV: Diary of the Video Guerillas.[7]
Over the years, more than thirty "guerrilla video" makers were participants in TVTV productions. They included members of theAnt Farm (Chip Lord,Doug Michels,Hudson Marquez, and Curtis Schreier) and theVideofreex (Skip Blumberg, Nancy Cain, Chuck Kennedy, andParry Teasdale).[8] Other participants in TVTV included designer Elan Soltes, producerDavid Axelrod, actor-comedianBill Murray[9] and his brotherBrian Doyle-Murray, cinematographer Paul Goldsmith, actor and directorHarold Ramis,[10] producer Wendy Appel (aka Wendy Apple), and lawyerMichael Couzens.[11]
In 1976-1977, experimental filmmakerWheeler Winston Dixon briefly joined the collective, editing most of theSupervision series, as well as portions of theHard Rain Special and the entirety ofThe TVTV Show.
The move to Los Angeles brought many in the group more into the orbit of conventional filmmaking.Bill Murray went on to become a film and TV star;Michael Shamberg a film producer, most notably with his companyJersey Films, in collaboration withStacey Sher andDanny DeVito;Allen Rucker a writer and author;Wheeler Winston Dixon an author and university professor;Harold Ramis a film director, writer and actor;Skip Blumberg a videographer and producer;Tom Weinberg a producer based in his hometown, Chicago; and Elan Soltes a video graphic designer in Hollywood.
TheBerkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive has digitized hundreds of hours of raw footage shot forThe World's Largest TV Studio,Four More Years, andGerald Ford's America, along with extensive paper archives.[12] Collections of TVTV productions and footage can also be found atMedia Burn Independent Video Archive,[13]Electronic Arts Intermix,[14]Visual Studies Workshop[15] andExperimental Television Center.[16]
The 2018 filmTVTV: Video Revolutionaries by director Paul Goldsmith explored the group's history.[17]