TV POWWW! and Televised Play in the Early Videogame Industry

TV POWWW! was a television program built around a technology which allowed viewers to control televised videogames over the telephone. This article chronicles its history while analyzing its technology, social contexts, aesthetics, and impact on game design and development. We situate TV POWWW! at the nexus of several developments during the late 1970s and early 1980s. These include new perceptions of mediated interaction facilitated by computerization and technical communication networks, experiments in participatory television, ideas about simplified videogame design for televised play contexts, and forms of gendered spectatorship and play.