Materialities of Television History

This short take reflects on the process and experience of accessing fanzines about television. These fanzines, published in the 1970s and 1980s, account for the materiality of historical relationships with television in at least three directions: 1) Reflecting on working with paper documents, and their digital copies; 2) Noting where collections overlap, but the handwritten annotations on archived pieces differ; and 3) Material conditions of watching television are part of fans’ accounts of being an audience.

Keywords: 1970s ; 1980s ; archival practice ; archive ; audience ; digital archive ; documents ; fanzine ; letterzine ; spectatorship