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TVTV (short for Top Value Television) was a San Francisco-based pioneering video collective founded in 1972 by Allen Rucker, Michael Shamberg, Tom Weinberg, Hudson Marquez and Megan Williams. Shamberg was author of the 1971 “do-it-yourself” video production manual Guerrilla Television. Over the years, more than thirty “guerrilla video” makers were participants in TVTV productions. They included members of the Ant Farm: Chip Lord, Doug Michels, Hudson Marquez and Curtis Schreier; the Videofreex, Skip Blumberg, Nancy Cain, Chuck Kennedy, and Parry Teasdale. TVTV pioneered the use of independent video based on wanting to change society and have a good time inventing new and then-revolutionary media, ½” SonyPortapak video equipment, and later embracing the ¾” video format.

The group made a series of unique socially significant historical documentaries such as:

• Four More Years (1972), covering the 1972 Republican National Convention
• The World’s Largest TV Studio (1972), covering the 1972 Democratic National Convention
• Adland (1974), an examination of American commercial culture
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• Lord of the Universe (1974), an award-winning documentary on the activities of the Guru Maharaj Ji and his followers^[1]
• TVTV Looks at the Oscars (1976)
• TVTV: Super Bowl (1976)
• Gerald Ford’s America (1975)
• The TVTV Show (1976), TVTV’s final television special, co-produced with NBC television
• The Bob Dylan Hard Rain Special (1976), another NBC co-production
• Supervision (1976), a multipart PBS series about the birth of television and its cultural impact

Other participants in TVTV included designer Elan Soltes, producer David Axelrod, actor-comedian Bill Murray and his brother Brian Doyle Murray, cinematographer Paul Goldsmith, actor and director Harold Ramis and producer Wendy Appel (aka Wendy Apple)….”

I was so lucky to have Allen as a teacher.  Who better to teach Guerrilla Television than one of its founders??   If you have a chance, and live in LA, come check out “A Night with TVTV”.