A Provisional Overview of Artists' Television discusses the history of video art in conjunction with the history of television. This includes their relationships to communication, and the social context of commercial production and dissemination.

The first affordable portable video equipment is introduced by Sony in 1965. The medium's easy access and non-preciousness allowed for direct communication and engagement with social and political concerns. Artists can also take ownership of the context in which their work is viewed and to intervene in the distribution of information.

With a shift from aesthetic to communicative, the medium of video opens up the opportunity for creating a social space for community engagement within museum contexts. The discourse on the dematerialization of the art object, and the role of the art object is also discussed.

Consideration of the work's relationship to its audience becomes important as artists begin to question their work's function in the gallery space. Ross discusses how video pieces engage notions of consciousness, and passiveness present around the culture of television viewing and art viewing alike.

Ross mentions Nam June Paik and Vostell as being the pioneers of experimenting with video as a material, and appropriating/deconstructing televisions to do so. Vito Acconci is also discussed. These explorations and early histories occurred in and around the New York arts scene.

Ross includes a survey of many artists works including Nancy Holt, Joan Jonas, Paul McCarthy, Ira Schneider and others to discuss video's thematics from metaphysical to psychodramatic to conceptual notions of the screen's layers and the use of video within the space of installation such as multichannel etc. Ross also discusses artists challenge of time and perception in video practice- whether as a direct engagement with time as a material.