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Start Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
Around the same time that the feminist and LGBTQ2+ movements were becoming visible in Canada, public access emerged in the early 1970s in the aftermath of social and technological changes and took the form of mandatory commitment on the part of the cable companies to provide equipment, training, and transmission for “citizen-produced programming” (Goldberg 1991, 10). Feminist and queer activists subsequently took to the medium of public access, creating shows which exemplified a type of information and connective activism (McKinney 2020; Renzi 2020) as they “[brought] together people, their visions of justice…and provide[d] access to information” (McKinney 2020, 2).
This paper will revisit early queer public access shows which aired in the 1970s in Canada, such Toronto-based show Gay News and Views. Specifically, this paper will argue that public access television in the 1970s was intimately linked to activist circles, who were emboldened by community cable’s potential to solve a variety of social, political, and economic problems (Streeter 1997). Activists were not only committed to amplifying and transmitting visions of feminist, gay, and lesbian liberation on the Canadian airwaves, but also reimagined the medium of television as an “electronic soapbox” which would constitute the “ideal vehicle of communication for a truly pluralistic, participatory society” (Linder 1999, xxvii). While these optimistic views of cable access allowed various groups to have a platform to communicate about political projects in various Canadian provinces, this paper will also interrogate the emancipatory potential of community cable in Canada’s specific media context and analyze the limits which structured the possibility to (re)imagine queer television programs in the country.
Works Cited
Goldberg, Kim. The Barefoot Channel: Community Television as a Tool for Social Change. New Star Book, 1991.
McKinney, Cait. Information Activism: A Queer History of Lesbian Media Technologies. Duke UP, 2020.
Linder, Laura R. Public Access Television: America’s Electronic Soapbox. Praeger, 1999.
Renzi, Alessandra. Hacked Transmissions: Technology and Connective Activism in Italy. U of Minnesota P, 2020.
Streeter, Thomas. “Blue Skies and Strange Bedfellows: The Discourse of Cable Television.” The Revolution Wasn’t Televised: Sixties Television and Social Conflict, edited by Michael Curtain and Lynn Spigel. Routledge, 1997, pp. 221–243.
Alternative News and Views on the Canadian Cable Airwaves: Queer Reimaginings of Television in the 1970s
Around the same time that the feminist and LGBTQ2+ movements were becoming visible in Canada, public access emerged in the early 1970s in the aftermath of social and technological changes and took the form of mandatory commitment on the part of the cable companies to provide equipment, training, and transmission for “citizen-produced programming” (Goldberg 1991, 10). Feminist and queer activists subsequently took to the medium of public access, creating shows which exemplified a type of information and connective activism (McKinney 2020; Renzi 2020) as they “[brought] together people, their visions of justice…and provide[d] access to information” (McKinney 2020, 2).
This paper will revisit early queer public access shows which aired in the 1970s in Canada, such Toronto-based show Gay News and Views. Specifically, this paper will argue that public access television in the 1970s was intimately linked to activist circles, who were emboldened by community cable’s potential to solve a variety of social, political, and economic problems (Streeter 1997). Activists were not only committed to amplifying and transmitting visions of feminist, gay, and lesbian liberation on the Canadian airwaves, but also reimagined the medium of television as an “electronic soapbox” which would constitute the “ideal vehicle of communication for a truly pluralistic, participatory society” (Linder 1999, xxvii). While these optimistic views of cable access allowed various groups to have a platform to communicate about political projects in various Canadian provinces, this paper will also interrogate the emancipatory potential of community cable in Canada’s specific media context and analyze the limits which structured the possibility to (re)imagine queer television programs in the country.
Works Cited
Goldberg, Kim. The Barefoot Channel: Community Television as a Tool for Social Change. New Star Book, 1991.
McKinney, Cait. Information Activism: A Queer History of Lesbian Media Technologies. Duke UP, 2020.
Linder, Laura R. Public Access Television: America’s Electronic Soapbox. Praeger, 1999.
Renzi, Alessandra. Hacked Transmissions: Technology and Connective Activism in Italy. U of Minnesota P, 2020.
Streeter, Thomas. “Blue Skies and Strange Bedfellows: The Discourse of Cable Television.” The Revolution Wasn’t Televised: Sixties Television and Social Conflict, edited by Michael Curtain and Lynn Spigel. Routledge, 1997, pp. 221–243.
Bio
Axelle Demus (they/them) is a PhD candidate in the joint Communication and Culture program at York and Toronto Metropolitan University. They hold an MA in Anglophone studies from the Université de Nantes, France, during which they studied the history of HIV/AIDS activist media production and circulation in North America. Their PhD dissertation explores the history of queer cable access television in Ontario, Canada, from the 1970s to the early 2000s and its intersections with the wider constellation of queer community media and activist networks in the province. Contact information: ademus44@yorku.ca.