ONE Minute of Light

Today, March 24, 2005, is an important day. Today marks the beginning of a new network, one that starts with a single minute of light shown simultaneously across the country by every public, educational, and government access station. This minute of light is to commemorate both Media Democracy Week (March 20-26) and the life and work of Dirk Koning, a man who embodied the vision and spirit of Community Media, and who had a strong, personal influence in my life and the development of the DigitalBicycle.

Excerpt the email sent by Tony Riddle (Executive Director of the Alliance for Community Media) that started this:

Why is this important? Well, once an idea is born-once it first happens, once it takes life-every other thing that happens is an elaboration. Once we act as one across our channels, we give birth to a network. It doesn't matter what the content is. It doesn't matter if every single channel can do this at this time.

What matters is that, for once we will be acting as one organism to emphasize our commonality, to emphasize our common values. Acting as one, we set in motion the vast resource we have all across this land.

In a year which will see sweeping changes to the country's telecommunications law, we give humble birth to a television network which can speak directly to the public on the need for Media Democracy. We have to do this now. Do not expect corporate media to proclaim the need for community media.

We must use Community Media to protect Community Media. Protect not only franchise fees or PEG channel capacity. We are part of a larger community of Democratic Media that desperately needs us to organize this tremendous resource of ours. We begin this now.

Though we suffered a great loss this year, this gives me hope.

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The video that we're airing in Lowell tonight at 9 p.m. is available for download as a .torrent as a direct download from the Internet Archive,and is also posted at OurMedia,.

It's a 29.97fps, 640x480 standard, QuickTime compatible MPEG-4 that can be easily and freely cablecast if anyone would like to use it for their own station. I encourage any stations who created their own pieces to share them online as well and would be willing to walk interested parties through the process.