While working as a record store clerk at LA’s Licorice Pizza in the mid-80s, Tosh Berman was approached by Gary Calamar, the store manager at the time, about hosting a public access talk show. Before YouTube channels, TikTok, and Instagram reels, American cable television was mandated to provide airtime to the public according to the Federal Communications Act of 1934. In 1968, the first public access television stations were created offering local communities a non-commercial and unrestricted communications platform to broadcast their own content through cable TV.

With a full production team consisting mostly of friends, “Tea with Tosh” aired 22 episodes across 1985-1987 featuring Berman in conversation with artists and friends for a strict 30-minute live time slot on public access television. Tom Recchion of the Los Free Music Society, artist Bruce Conner, musician Phranc, Bookworm’s Michael Silverblatt, poet Jack Hirschman, and writers/poets Amy Gerstler and Benjamin Weissman were among the list of guests who sat for interviews at a cable access station next door to the now-closed Hollywood Metropolitan Hotel on Sunset Blvd. An interview with music composer Philip Glass is also featured, but across two episodes which took place at the home of art collectors Stanley and Elyse Grinstein, where Glass was staying at the time.

The last episode aired in 1987, which featured artist Lun*na Menoh, who Berman had recently met at an exhibition of her work at Onyx Theatre. They soon became a couple and married. When asked why the show ended, Berman notes the labor involved in putting each episode together, but also his meeting Lun*na as a sign that the show had come full circle—an ending signaled by a new beginning.

You can watch all 22 episodes of “Tea with Tosh” here.