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VOL. 6, NO. 2

TELEVISIONS
$2.50

4
Artists Television Network Cable Soho

Alternative television is alive and growing in the form of an organization called the Artists Television Network (ATN) and its main project, SoHo Television.
ATN grew out of an earlier group called Cable SoHo, an organization that produced and showed several programs on New York City's Manhattab Cable's public access channels in 1976 and early 1977. Cable SoHo featured contemporary music compositions, two-way video experiments, and works of video art.
It was a consortium of arts organizations and individual artists which lacked a central point of organization and "was too unwieldy," according to ATN's associate administrator, Leandra Strobing. Thus, in October, 1977, participating groups and artists reorganized to form the Artists Television Network, with some of the original members of Cable SoHo remaining on an advisory board and the board of directors.
ATN is a non-profit group funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). It utilizes the production facilities of New York's Automation House, Manhattan Cable, and ATN President Jaime Davidovich's loft at 152 Wooster St. in Manhattan's SoHo district.
According to Strobing, SoHo is an ideal location. "We're here because this is where art is happening in New York," she said. "There are an incredible amount of art spaces in this area--The Kitchen, the 112 Greene St. Workshop, Global Village, the Ontological-Hysteric theatre, and over 21 others, not to mention all the individual artists."

Strobing feels that for programming, New York is the place. "We want to give artists the tool of television. We want to supply them with technical experience so that they can use TV to bring their work to a larger audience," she said.
SoHo Television's current 13-week series, which airs on Manhattan Cable's channel 10 at 9 p.m. on Monday nights, has featured video art, as well as an interview/performance with John Cage, theatre by Richard Foreman, and a documentary by Canadian artist Vincent Trasov. Entitled, "My Five Years in a Nutshell--The Rise and Fall of the Peanut Part," Trasov's piece features a giant Peanut which runs for mayor of Vancouver, B.C. and receives 4 percent of the popular vote. SoHo Television currently has six more programs in production.

Stressing ATN's "good strong business base," Strobing described the ATN Research and Development Project. Under an NEA-grant, ATN will examine the possibility of a cooperative cable network of arts centers in SoHo that would transmit arts programming to the public through the New York City cable television system. "We want to connect SoHo and alternative media to the state and the county," she said. "We're hoping to set up a better distribution system."
ATN is looking into the possibility of acquiring a mobile unit, simulcasting music concerts with New York's Pacifica radio station, WBAI, as well as talking.