Commercial TV networks struggled to assimilate the avant-garde’s participatory performance

Evidence

According to Schneemann, Meat Joy resulted in an invitation to create a Happening for NBC’s Tonight Show. Dubious regarding her proposal to incorporate the debris swept up after the previous night’s broadcast, the show’s producers withdrew their offer when the host Johnny Carson declined to participate in the Happening by standing on the backs of three women or, alternately, vaulting over them. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1918

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Countercultural music’s peak audiences came through mainstream broadcast television — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 569