[Peace-discuss] Fw: Bringing Democracy Now! to Champaign/Urbana

[Randall Cotton]

Here's the word from Democracy Now! on funding for public-access cable TV
broadcasts. While they *can* provide the funds ($300), they'd prefer it if
we could raise the money ourselves, due to limited funds (see e-mail from
DN! below). It seems to me that AWARE may want to step up and sponsor this.
Having presented the idea during last week's meeting, I plan now on asking
AWARE to fund the $300 cost during this Sunday's meeting.

To clarify, this project is to broadcast Democracy Now! on UPTV cable
channel 6 every weekday morning at 7AM Central time using a *live* satellite
video feed via Free Speech TV. The $300 is an annual programming fee and
covers the first year. UPTV has suggested they may pay the $300/year in
succeeding years, but failing that, I plan to take responsibility, if
necessary, to raise the funds every year (hopefully with AWARE's help =8-).

The live 7AM DN! broadcast need only be a starting point. We could go from
there and try to get DN! repeated, say around lunchtime or on the weekends.
And while the core reason for this project is to make a live broadcast of
DN! easily available to a huge audience in Chambana, the end result is that
UPTV will then have the rights to broadcast *ANY* programming on Free Speech
TV. FSTV programming matches AWARE areas of interest very closely (see
www.fstv.org).

As a side note, let me point out that we wouldn't need to come up with
*another* $300 for WILL . That is, if we were to succeed in getting a
broadcast slot for DN! on WILL, this $300 would *NOT* be required for their
feed. This is because WILL would have the right satellite equipment (large
C-band dish and C-band video receiver) to bring down a DN! feed from a
different satellite free of charge.

R

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "angie" <angie at democracynow.org>
To: "Randall Cotton" <recotton at earthlink.net>
Cc: "Denis Moynihan" <denis at democracynow.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2004 7:00 AM
Subject: Re: Bringing Democracy Now! to Champaign, IL


: Hi Randall,
: Sorry for the late response but I've been out of the country until
: yesterday. We do have a limited budget for underwriting and hope that DN
: supporters in your area can raise the funds locally. While we try not to
: turn down any requests for underwriting, we really need community support
: for the broadcast. Let me know if this is feasible.
: Best,
: Angie Karran
: Democracy Now! Outreach
: Email: angie at democracynow.org
: