Apparently, The Revolution Will Be Televised

Gil Scott Heron – he was great.. but he was wrong…

Today we are in the eighth day of the so-called Wall Street Takeover.

So far, it appears to be mostly an unfocused mess.

As Gina Belafonte reports in The New York Times today,

That cause, though, in specific terms, was virtually impossible to decipher. The group was clamoring for nothing in particular to happen right away — not the implementation of the Buffett rule or the increased regulation of the financial industry. Some didn’t think government action was the answer because the rich, they believed, would just find new ways to subvert the system.

But even if this rag-tag group of retro-1968 protesters and partiers don’t have a coherent vision of what they want or even what they are protesting against, they certainly have a very good understanding of how the new media works.

Anxious not to be victimized by the whims of a conventional media that has the attention span of a gnat – ‘And not this!”, they have glommed onto online video as a way of broadcasting their event, on their own terms, live, 24-hours a day.

It’s CNN without the C for Cable or N for Network.

The news part still applies.

You can follow the Wall Street events live, as they happen, here at Globalrevolution.

It’s not the most compelling TV in the world.

They clearly need some instruction on how to make television

However, my sister, who was the Executive Producer for Maury Povich and Sally Jesse Raphael for many years could probably help them out a lot.

What the site does show is that it is now possible for anyone to create any kind of TV any time they want without the need for a network or millions or billions of dollars.

What they’re lacking here is a coherent idea. But the concept is spot on.

Take this power to something more interesting and you’ve got something.

What you’ve got is the effective end of the TV networks.

Pointing these cameras at a bunch of wanna be hippies from the 60s is one thing, but pointing the same cameras at, say, the Olympics… (or terrorist holding live hostages to take it to the other extreme) is where this is all going to end up.

What’s happening on Wall Street is interesting, not for what they are saying, but for how they are choosing to say it.

As one broker noted, staring out of his window – “all these kids have Apple computers. They don’t even know that Apple is selling for $400 a share”.

Probably not. But they know what an Apple Computer can do.

And for the broker I would say – sell Comcast!