Media Art Net | UTV: UTV (Our Television Broadcaster)

UTV «UTV (Our Television Broadcaster)» | Our Television Broadcaster (UTV)

UTV, «UTV (Our Television Broadcaster)», 1995
Our Television Broadcaster (UTV) | © UTV

Monitor text: Advertising for All Promoting the gray market Great, finally I can market the small animals I breed – especially the fantastic mutations! Fantastic, Teleshop for everyman. Handmade, super-cheap advertising is submitted to the broadcaster and then digitally assigned to the various search and offer (etc.) categories; these in turn are labelled VPS or Show View. The viewer can thus orient herself easily, programming her video recorder in the morning and viewing what she needs in the evening. An economically viable model is provided by local advertising circulars, which also develop their own subculture of texts and communication structure. If this concept was transposed to television and broadcasting time was offered at very low prices, private individuals could use this time for classified advertising, but also for expressing all other kinds of messages. This advertising at dumping prices falls so far beneath normal standards of presentation that it cannot interest commercial firms, who are thus kept away. The proceeds of the classified advertising can also finance an edited low-budget program in the evening. This would relieve the current self-exploitation of un- and semi-professional producers, thus establishing a relatively autonomous broadcasting zone.

Categories: Television

Keywords: Counter Culture

Relevant passages:

Rudolf Frieling «Form Follows Format Tensions, Museums, Media Technology, and Media Art»

Check as well:

ATV «ATV-Aktion» Pierre Huyghe «Mobile TV»

UTV
«UTV (Our Television Broadcaster)»

Monitor text:
Take the Television.

Based on the hypothesis that the industry has meanwhile instrumentalized for its own purposes the leftist demands (Bert Brecht, Hans Magnus Enzensberger) that the public be made the producers, a new form of low-tech television for all and by all is suggested. This may recall the 'Media for Citizens' approaches of the 60s and 70s, but it is done in the knowledge that the results of that movement, for example Berlin's 'Offene Kanal' (Open Channel), have failed. Now, instead of creating a noncommercial zone, a low-budget TV operation is to be financed precisely through cheap advertising for any and all, on the model of a local advertising circular. Initial negotiations on a possible realization were conducted with the North-Rhine/Westphalia state media facility in 1996-97, but so far there are only a few token UTV studios in the art context. The framework was provided in 1997-98 by a travelling exhibition by the Viennese artist Heimo Zobernig, who also designed the simple studio. The concept for a UTV broadcasting station was presented in several texts and the comic found here.