introduction

In 1974, Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” blasted its

way to popular fame on radio channels, assuring the nation that television

was a medium of hopeless consensus, aimed at the w hite majority and suit­

ed only to reproducing the lackluster shop-a-day world of happy hom ebod­

ies. Proclaiming that one day “G reen A cres, [the] B ever ly H illb illies , and

H oo terv ille Ju n c t io n will no longer be so damn relevant,” Heron sang o f a

better world, better in part because, as he said in his famous last line, rather

than being on TV, the “revolution will be live.”