Deep Dish Television was the first public access television distribution network in the United States. Created in 1986 by Paper Tiger Television and based in New York City, the network was committed to exploring new and democratic ways of promoting video artwork and reporting. Their programs connected artists, independent videomakers, programmers, and social activists, and covered political topics such as the environmental movement, U.S. healthcare, and the Iraq War.
History Deep Dish Television was launched in 1986 by the ongoing production collective Paper Tiger Television. DeeDee Halleck was a founding member of both organizations. Starting with their Opening Series in 1986 and ending with We Interrupt This Program in 2018, Deep Dish Television distributed the work of independent videomakers, filmmakers, and activists in curated series on a variety of political topics.
In 2005, Deep Dish Television broadcast the series Shocking and Awful: A Grassroots Response to War and Occupation investigating the impact of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The series was later featured at the Whitney Museum's 2006 Biennial Exhibition and the Museum of Modern Art's "Theater of Operations: Gulf Wars 1991-2011" exhibition from 2019 to 2020. Deep Dish TV became known for their criticism of the Iraq War, and later produced extensive coverage of the World Tribunal on Iraq, the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity of the Bush Administration, and the Winter Soldier Eyewitness Accounts of the Iraq and Afghanistan Occupations.
In addition to their television programming, Deep Dish Television frequently organized and participated in film festivals, conferences, screenings, panel discussions, exhibitions, and speaking tours across the United States. They also had a history of advocacy for public access media and collaboration with other independent media organizations, including Democracy Now!, Free Speech TV, Indymedia, and DIVA TV.
Programming Deep Dish Television's archives are held at Fales Library. Many of their productions have also been uploaded to their YouTube and Vimeo platforms. The hundreds of programs distributed by Deep Dish Television were packaged in the following series:
The Opening Series, 1986 Deep Dish Cooks Up a Second Series, 1988 Fearless TV for the 90s, 1990 Public Access: Spigot for Bigots or Channels for Change?, 1990 DIVA TV: Collections from this Activist Collective, 1990 ...Will be Televised: Video Documents from Asia, 1990 News You Can Use, 1990 Green Screen: Grassroots Views of the Environmental Crisis, 1990 The Gulf Crisis Project, 1990-1991 The Lannan Foundation Presents: Writers Uncensored, 1991 Ideas and Power, 1991 Behind Censorship: The Assault on Civil Liberties, 1991 Celebrating 20 Years of Public Access Television, 1991 ROAR! A Paper Tiger TV Mini Retrospective, 1991 Unheard Voices, 1992 Beyond the Browning of America, 1992 Siempre Trabajando: Latinos and Labor, 1992 Rock the Boat, 1992 Visions of Ourselves, 1993 L.A. Freewaves: Experimental Video from Southern California, 1993 News You Can Use, 1993 Democracy in Communications, 1993 Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired, 1994 News You Can Use, 1994 Emergency Programming: Mumia Abu-Jamal, 1995 Breaking Conventions, 1996 America Behind Bars, 1997 Showdown in Seattle, 1999 Breaking the Bank, 2000 Crashing the Party, 2000 Inauguration, 2001 Shocking and Awful: A Grassroots Response to War and Occupation, 2005 The World Tribunal in Iraq, 2006 Waves of Change: The Many Voices of the Global Village, 2007 Nothing is Safe: Israel's 2006 War on Lebanon, 2008 Winter Soldier, 2008 DIY Media: Movement Perspectives on Critical Moments, 2008 Rent-to-Own: Poverty Project, 2009 Uprooted: A Grassroots Examination of the Politics of Migration, 2011 An American Nightmare: Black Labor and Liberation, 2015 We Interrupt This Program, 2018
References
External links
Deep Dish TV Records, Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University Special Collections