Paper Tiger Television Records

Call Number

MSS.276

Date

1968-2017, inclusive

Creator

Paper Tiger Television Collective (Firm)

Extent

187.9 Linear Feet

in 146 record cartons, 35 oversize folders, 22 box binders, 17 flat boxes, 15 manuscript boxes, 11 cassette boxes, 10 upright video containers, 3 card boxes, 2 LP boxes, and 1 serials box.

Extent

2.71 Gigabytes

in 873 files.

Extent

4 websites

in 4 archived websites.

Extent

1100 U-matic

Extent

369 MiniDV

Extent

229 VHS

Extent

131 Hi8

Extent

47 Betacam_SP

Extent

16 1_Inch_Video_Reel

Extent

13 Betacam

Extent

7 S-VHS

Extent

4 Digital_Betacam

Extent

3 DVCAM

Extent

1 Betamax

Extent

1 audiocassette

Language of Materials

Materials primarily in English, with some videos in Spanish and Arabic.

Abstract

Paper Tiger Television is a New York-based video collective founded in 1981. Their public access programming critiques media, culture, and politics. The Paper Tiger Television Records contain video recordings, paper materials, and born-digital materials documenting the organization's television productions, administrative activities, participation in events, publicity, financial management, political advocacy, and relationships with other independent media organizations.

Historical Note

Paper Tiger Television is a New York-based public access video collective. Co-founded by DeeDee Halleck in 1981, Paper Tiger TV was the first nationally distributed public access television program. Its programming critiques media corporatization and censorship, covering issues such as racism, sexism, economic inequality, and U.S. imperialism. Episodes often follow the format of a guest scholar reading and critiquing a piece of mainstream media, such as Paper Tiger TV's earliest programs featuring Herb Schiller critiquing The New York Times. Frequent guests include Herb Schiller, Brian Winston, Tuli Kupferberg, Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, and Joel Kovel.

In 1986, Paper Tiger TV founded Deep Dish Television, the first grassroots satellite network in the United States. From 1986 to 2018, Deep Dish TV produced work by independent videomakers, programmers, and social activists on a variety of cultural and political topics. Deep Dish TV collaborated with Paper Tiger TV on the Gulf Crisis TV Project, a ten-part series exploring many aspects of the Gulf War.

In addition to being broadcasted nationally on public access channels, Paper Tiger's programs have been shown internationally in screenings and installations. Installations in this collection include "Dream House" at the Wexner Center for the Arts, 1991; "Smashing Myths of the Information Age" at the San Francisco Art Institute, 1992; and the "Being the Media: Designing a New Rrradical Media" Conference in New York, 2012.

Paper Tiger TV has a history of advocacy in and outside of their television programming. Members of the collective have organized workshops and programs, distributed educational resources on video production, and collaborated with youth in New York City to produce programs such as "Homecoming Queens" (1999), "Access Orbit" (2001), "Biorhythms" (2002), "On the Real" (2002), "War and the Economy" (2002), and "Basta Ya!" (2010). Paper Tiger has also continuously advocated for public access programming, and has long standing relationships with other independent media organizations such as the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, Democracy Now!, and the Alliance for Community Media.

Arrangement

This collection is arranged in eight series, with Series II, III, VI, and VII arranged into subseries. The arrangement is as follows:

Series I. Administrative Files, arranged alphabetically;

Series II. Activities, arranged alphabetically;
Subseries II.A Programming;
Subseries II.B Exhibits and Installations;
Subseries II.C Workshops and Conferences;
Subseries II.D Film Festivals and Screenings;

Series III. Publicity, arranged alphabetically;
Subseries III.A Press;
Subseries III.B Promotion;

Series IV. Financial Material, arranged chronologically;

Series V. Posters and Maps, arranged alphabetically;

Series VI. Photographs, arranged alphabetically;
Subseries VI.A Show Stills;
Subseries VI.B Installations and Events;
Subseries VI.C Office, Party, and Youth Program Snapshots;

Series VII. Video Productions, arranged chronologically;
Subseries VII.A Broadcast Videos;
Subseries VII.B Non-Broadcast Videos;

Series VIII. Objects, arranged alphabetically;

Series IX. Archived Websites

Scope and Contents

The Paper Tiger Television Records (1968-2017) contain video recordings, paper materials, photographs, and born-digital materials documenting the organization's television productions, administrative activities, participation in events, publicity, financial management, political advocacy, and relationships with other independent media organizations.

This collection documents the day-to-day operations of Paper Tiger TV, including administrative files such as meeting minutes, training materials, lease agreements, and correspondence; financial documents such as grant applications, budget reports, receipts, invoices, and donor files; and photographs of office activities and collective members.

Paper Tiger TV's participation in events, such as exhibitions, conferences, workshops, screenings, and film festivals, is represented in this collection in ephemera, such as flyers, postcards, schedules, and posters; planning documentation, including correspondence, timelines, budgets, and floor plans; video recordings used in installations; and photographs and video recordings of event proceedings.

Publicity for Paper Tiger TV's programming and activities in this collection includes published articles and advertisements, as well as promotional materials such as ephemera, outreach materials, graphic design, outreach to viewers, and promotional videos.

The majority of this collection documents Paper Tiger TV's television productions from 1981-2014. Video recordings include broadcast and distribution masters of programs, as well as dubs, production elements, various edits of programs, and source material such as unedited footage of events and interviews. Production files, found in Series II.A, include correspondence and contracts with partner organizations, meeting minutes, budgets, project proposals, submissions, scripts, cue cards, research files, and viewer feedback on programs. The collection also includes objects used in production, such as props, banners, clothing, "crankees" (hand-painted scrolls used to display credits in videos), and backdrops.

Subjects

Organizations

Paper Tiger Television Collective (Firm); Deep Dish TV Network; Democracy Now! (Organization)

Genres

Audiocassettes.; Videocassettes.; Photographs.; Props (object genres); Printed ephemera.

People

Halleck, DeeDee

Topics

Public Access Television -- New York.; Television broadcasting -- United States.; Alternative mass media -- United States; Mass media criticism -- United States; Feminism and mass media.; Documentary television programs.; Politics and government -- Television programs.; AIDS (Disease) and mass media.; Persian Gulf War, 1991.

Conditions Governing Access

Repository permission is required for access to some materials in Series IV. Please contact Fales Library and Special Collections, special.collections@nyu.edu, 212-998-2596.

Conditions Governing Use

This collection is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use materials in the collection in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Preferred Citation

Identification of item, date; Paper Tiger Television Records; MSS 276; box number; folder number or item identifier; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

The Paper Tiger Television Archive was donated to NYU's Fales Library by the Paper Tiger Television Collective in 2010. Accretions were donated in 2016 by Julie Ludwig, Paper Tiger Television, and in 2018 by Marisa Holmes. Further accretions were donated in 2019.

http://papertiger.org/, http://blog.papertiger.org/, and http://papertigertv.blogspot.com/ were initially selected by Tamiment curators and captured through the use of The California Digital Library's Web Archiving Service in circa 2007-2009 as part of the Alternative Mass Media / News Web Sites Web Archive. In November 2015, these websites were migrated to Archive-It. Archive-It uses web crawling technology to capture websites at a scheduled time and displays only an archived copy, from the resulting WARC file, of the website. In 2015, these seeds were transferred to the Fales Library. In 2018, http://weinterruptthisprogram.org/ was added. The accession number associated with this website is 2019.057.

Audiovisual Access Policies and Procedures

Access to some audiovisual materials in this collection is available through digitized access copies. Researchers may view an item's original container, but the media themselves are not available for playback because of preservation concerns. Materials that have already been digitized are noted in the collection's finding aid and can be requested in our reading room.

Audiovisual materials that have not been preserved may not be available to researchers. Materials not yet digitized will need to have access copies made before they can be used. To request an access copy, or if you are unsure if an item has been digitized, please contact Fales Library and Special Collections, special.collections@nyu.edu, 212-998-2596, with the collection name, collection number, and a description of the item(s) requested. A staff member will respond to you with further information.

Take Down Policy

Archived websites are made accessible for purposes of education and research. NYU Libraries have given attribution to rights holders when possible; however, due to the nature of archival collections, we are not always able to identify this information.

If you hold the rights to materials in our archived websites that are unattributed, please let us know so that we may maintain accurate information about these materials.

If you are a rights holder and are concerned that you have found material on this website for which you have not granted permission (or is not covered by a copyright exception under US copyright laws), you may request the removal of the material from our site by submitting a notice, with the elements described below, to the special.collections@nyu.edu.

Please include the following in your notice: Identification of the material that you believe to be infringing and information sufficient to permit us to locate the material; your contact information, such as an address, telephone number, and email address; a statement that you are the owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed and that you have a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; a statement that the information in the notification is accurate and made under penalty of perjury; and your physical or electronic signature. Upon receiving a notice that includes the details listed above, we will remove the allegedly infringing material from public view while we assess the issues identified in your notice.

Appraisal

In March 2025, 88 linear feet of audiovisual materials were deaccessioned, including duplicate videos and commercial videos; 2 linear feet of paper materials were deaccessioned, including sensitive financial documents and employee records; and 10 computer discs were deaccessioned, including copyrighted materials, sensitive employee documents, and proprietary computer programs.

Related Materials

The Deep Dish TV Records, MSS.312

Collection processed by

Laura Newsome, 2012. Video recordings processed by Harry Bleakley McDowell, 2014. Accretions processed by Rachel Mahre, Linda Smith, and Lucy Allen, 2025.

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2025-03-18 19:32:22 UTC.

Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Language: Finding aid written in English

Processing Information

In 2014, the Paper Tiger Television archived website was added to Tamiment Library Web Collection on Organizations (WEB ARC 003). Crawling of the websites in this collection were ceased in 2018. In 2022, archived websites associated with this collection in the Alternative Mass Media / News Web Sites Web Archive were shared to the Paper Tiger Television Web Archive in Archive-It for access and replay purposes.

The original collection was processed by an archivist in 2012. Video recordings were processed by an archivist in 2014. Additional processing information prior to 2025 was not recorded.

In 2024-2025, accessions 2016.021, 2016.042, 2019.006, and 2019.023 were processed by an archivist. The materials were divided into existing series based on the records' contents and arranged intellectually within these series. Audiovisual and digital physical media were physically arranged by format and lightly cleaned. Log sheets and notes stored within video cases were removed and stored with other paper materials.

During processing of the accretions, existing description for the rest of the collection was revised to meet current standards. Some videos that were previously digitized could not be directly matched with their analog counterparts. In these cases, the requestable digital component was attached to the parent record rather than the child analog video. Rolled posters were flattened by the Preservation Department.

25 floppy disks, and 9 optical discs were forensically imaged, analyzed, and arranged. New York University Libraries follows professional standards and best practices when imaging, ingesting, and processing born-digital material in order to maintain the integrity of the content.

Revisions to this Guide

January and March 2019: Record updated by Rachel Searcy to reflect 2019 accretions

March 2021 - May 2023: Updated by Rachel Mahre to state that video materials have been digitized and are accessible to patrons

July 2021: Edited by Anna Björnsson McCormick to correctly identify Pearl Bowser

February 2023: Updated by Nicole Greenhouse to include archived websites and additional administrative information

March 2025: Updated by Rachel Mahre to reflect processing of accretions

Repository

Fales Library and Special Collections