Deep Dish TV (DDTV) describes itself as “the first national grassroots satellite network” that seeks to “democratiz[e] media” by “linking independent producers, programmers, community-based activists and viewers who support movements for social change and economic justice.” The network was founded in New York City in 1986 by activist Dee Dee Halleck, to distribute radical videos created by Paper Tiger Television and other producers. Halleck today serves as DDTV's Waves of Change Project Coordinator.
Halleck's initial idea—later imitated by Free Speech TV and other left-wing activist broadcasters—was to try to fill empty gaps in the programming schedules of public-access cable-television stations across the United States; i.e., time slots during which nothing was being aired. Those hours, Halleck reasoned, could be devoted to leftist programming via a free satellite channel. Thus did she create DDTV to serve as a radicalizing, organizing, mobilizing tool.
Throughout the Iraq War, Deep Dish gave extensive, positively slanted exposure to the anti-war movement. Most notably, the network provided live television and Internet coverage of the 2008 Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan hearings, where U.S. veterans convened in Washington, DC to testify against American war crimes. (The event was sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against the War.)
DDTV has also produced a considerable amount of anti-Israel programming, such as Nothing Is Safe: Israel's 2006 War on Lebanon (broadcast in April 2008). Other Deep Dish shows have called for “transforming Palestine/Israel into a Single State,” a move that would effectively spell the end not only of Israel, but of all personal security for Jews in the Middle East. And in 2011, DDTV collaborated with Fida Qishta, a Palestinian journalist and filmmaker from Gaza, on a movie titled Should the Birds Fly? According to Deep Dish, this film "documents the pain caused by the brutal Israeli occupation" and "the brutal Israeli military control over Gaza."
DDTV's 2009 four-part series, DIY Media: Movement Perspectives on Critical Moments, was modeled on the “people's history” technique of the late historian Howard Zinn, telling “the history of recent social movements” in the United States “from the perspective of participants in those movements.” The series depicts America as a historically racist oppressor nation whose deep-seated injustices have been challenged only by courageous left-wing activists who “have sought equal rights for gays and lesbians; waged campaigns for environmental justice; struggled to curb corporate power; and fought against unjust, destructive U.S. foreign policy in Latin America.”
DDTV's programs are shown today on more than 200 public-access cable stations across the United States, as well as on selected PBS stations and satellite-dish stations like Free Speech TV and LinkTV. Deep Dish also seeks to reach student and community groups by screening and distributing DVD copies of its programs.
In the fall of 2011, DDTV supported the newly formed Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. One pro-OWS feature on the DDTV website, titled "Capitalism Makes Me Sick," depicts free-market economics as a "corrosive" system founded on "dirty, filthy, illusory money"—and as a breeding ground for physical and psychological pathology.
