Alex Bagg | Whitney Museum New York

Installation view

Photograph: Sheldan C. Collins, Courtesy Of The Artist And The Whitney Museum Of American Art

Thanks to YouTube and reality programming, just about anyone, it seems, can appear on television. But back when three broadcast networks ruled the medium, getting on TV was a really big deal for ordinary folks. What opportunities existed were limited to daytime shows or courtesy of your hometown station: by being a game show contestant, for instance, or if you happened to run into your local news crew covering a fire—then you could always jump into the shot and wave like a idiot. For the most part, however, the small screen was as much a barrier to a privileged domain as it was a window.