Looking for info on where I might find a showing of “The99percentfilm”   I saw that an outfilt called “Participant Media” has the rights to it and are going to “air” it on Wednesday.  With a name like that,  I made the mistaken assumption that I’d be able to see it online.  But no.  They do the AJ America thing,  and provide a link to see if my local cable company has the “Pivot TV”  channel.  No such luck.  I’m on Comcast,  the largest,  in a major city,  and no luck.  So much for “Paticipatory” media.

I left this comment on their Facebook page:

so,  for those of us who cant get the channel,  why is it that Particpant Media isn’t distributing this filem online as well?  Seems to fit the “People’s Media”  concept in a way that cable TV seems to be unable/unwilling to do.  Online is the ONLY way to get a “Particpant Media” that is truly paticipatory.
— see it in its context  here 

When are people (especially those seeking to get the word out from People’s movements),  going to realize that the Cable companies and mainstream media are NOT our aliies?  To direct us to “persuade our cable companies to carry the channel”  are starting out on a dead end.  What Al Jazeera English did at the beginning was to “JUst Do It”  by going online and just doing the news on the street (as in the Arab Spring coverage that put them on the map).  This audience of folks in America WAS their audience that put pressure on American Cable to carry their broadcast channel.  But what has happened with the arrival of Al Jazeera America,  is that we immediately get the AMERICAN version ,  which is to say,  NO ONLINE coverage,  and disconnection from the Al Jazeera English videos, including all archives.  Incredible throwing out the baby with the bathwater.  Al Jazeera is off the radar in America now.  Their audience has been abandoned (the online,  “Citizen Media” advocates, sick of the corporate hegemony over the information dissemination in this country.  Now AJ would be viewers are directed to a “link” to look up their cable company and ask them to carry the “Cable Channel”. Old media at its most absolutely inane.