Herb Schiller Reads the NYTimes 1981Tiger Reads Paper Tiger Television
2007, 45 minutes, Digital Video
7pm
Paper Tiger Television (PTTV) has been creating fun, funky, hard-hitting, investigative, compelling and truly alternative media for 25 years, and its groundbreaking productions have influenced generations of media artists and activists around the world. To tell the story of how this NYC video collective has grown and evolved since 1981, PTTV will premiere Paper Tiger Reads Paper Tiger Television. A jubilant mosaic of archival footage which features interviews with media critics and historians as well as current and past Tigers, including Dee Dee Halleck, Jesse Drew, George Stoney, Dierdre Boyle and Mary Feaster.

This is the story of how PTTV—a volunteer collective with a mission to "smash the myths of the information industry"—has consistently addressed the issues ignored and under-reported in commercial media. Through the collaborative efforts of artists, activists and scholars, PTTV made a name for itself producing a regular public access cable show that was unique in both form and content. An innovator in the video art movement of the early 1980s, PTTV developed its own unique style and experimented with the television medium by combining politics, performance and live broadcasts.

By exposing the hidden agenda of the mainstream media and questioning the powerful grip of corporate influence on media content, PTTV became a forerunner of the media reform movement. PTTV’s regular local cable show became the first nationally disseminated public access television series. Academics, artists and activists soon came to recognize PTTV for media excellence and critical analysis. With an innovative model for community media, PTTV helped spur the global development of a do-it-yourself (DIY) media movement. Much of today’s independent media can trace its roots directly to the network of media activists developed by PTTV throughout the 1980s and 90s.

Since the early years of PTTV, the collective has grown and changed with the evolving political and media landscape. In recent years, PTTV has continued to provide a much-needed critical look at our social condition by covering many issues that are often misrepresented or outright ignored by the mainstream. Homelessness, displacement, gender and queer issues, the fight for peace and justice, commercialization, globalization and global warming have all been the subjects of Paper Tiger’s programming, which combines well-researched journalistic practices with a handmade, accessible aesthetic.