David Antin's essay unpacks the relationship between video and its ominous counterpart, television.

He posits that there are two distinct video art discourses; cyberscat - "prose peppered with fragments of communication theory and McLuhanesque media talk" and formalist rap - engaging formalist concerns" (36).

Antin asserts that television theory must be inserted into the discussion. "It is with television that we have to begin to consider video, because if anything has defined the formal and technical properties of the video medium, it is the television industry. [...] The phenomenology of television viewing", says Antin, "haunts video" (36).

He goes on to describe the operation of broadcast television as a power hierarchy wherein transmission dominates reception. This relationship, Antin contends, "forms the pervasive and invisible background of all video" (38). Video artists then, attempt to subvert this hierarchy.

Antin explains that the most profound contrast between video and television work is in relation to time. Television's economic profit margin sets the standard of time. TV shows are set at particular time intervals to allow for maximum advertisement sales. Video work is often considered boring, because its duration is immediately compared to that of television programming. As Les Levine says, videotapes are boring if you demand that they be something else. If you demand videowork to be itself, then it is not boring" (39).