We welcome those visitors to this website who found out about us from an editorial that two CMA members co-wrote for the American Forum, a national editorial distribution network. The editorial, about the DTV transition, has garnered considerable attention in the American corporate media in recent weeks. And our editorial has been enormously popular. So much so, in fact, that our op-ed ranks as the most popular editorial in the history of the American Forum.

Here is a list of newspapers and websites that we know have published the editorial:

* The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
* The Capital Times (Madison, WI)
* The Kalamazoo Gazette (Kalamazoo, MI)
* The Sierra Vista Herald (Sierra Vista, AZ)
* The Delaware County Daily Times (Delaware County, PA)
* North Texas e-News
* CommonDreams News Center
* San Marcos Daily Record (San Marcos, TX)
* San Antonio Express News
* The Clinton News (Clinton, MS)
* The Lake Sun Leader (Camdenton, MO)
* The Island Reporter (Sanibel, FL)
* Bluefield Daily Telegraph (Bluefield, WV)
* The Corydon Democrat (Corydon, IN)


Note that there were no Chicago or Illinois newspapers in this list, although the suburbs Arlington Heights Post (in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights) did post a notice about our editorial, even quoting it briefly.

The popularity is the result of good timing, not only that of the American DTV transition, which is currently scheduled for February 17, 2009, but that the incoming Obama administration and key members of Congress have brought increased attention to the problems around the conversion. One stopgap measure which has gained considerable momentum is to postpone the deadline to buy more time -- perhaps to June 2009.

Regardless the debate over postponing the deadline, I should say, the momentum around this proposal is stunning. In the course of about a week, it has gone from "utterly impossible" to "likely to happen". For three years, media democracy activists have suggested postponing the deadline, but realized that such a proposal would be utterly dead in the water amid a Republican Congress, FCC, and White House that simply refused to budge on the issue. Indeed, many of us thought that such a deadline would have to have been moved no later than the end of 2007 in order to have any appreciable impact. It is breathtaking the degree this issue has moved to wider public consciousness.

One other thing of note: We've set up a sister website to Chicago Media Action about the DTV conversion at dtvredalert.org; we invite you to visit that website to learn more.

Incidentally, this date of this blogpost -- on January 15 -- marks the date for the first full state DTV conversion to occur, in Hawaii.

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