FiNews – AirMaria Update

Administration System

One big side project was our new administration system which is entirely behind the scenes of AirMaria but was essential to handle the growing number of videos which was getting too large to handle on Google Docs. It allows people to contribute from anywhere on the globe and provides many automation features that simplifies the production and publishing of videos especially the homilies. The system is currently online and operational and will be undergoing much fine tuning and many more features will be added.

Liturgical Section

We added a liturgical section to AirMaria which is still in its infancy and is an out growth of some of our automation endeavors just mentioned. There are a few goals in mind, help our priests prepare their homilies, make the readings easier to add to the homily posts and finally provide more information about the Mass to you, the viewer. All of this centers around a liturgical database that we created and linked to the AirMaria software that first enables the priests to read the readings and get access to related information including liturgical music, then once the priest selects which form of the Mass he wants to use, a post will automatically generated that has the readings displayed and all the same information linked to it so you too can access it via our Liturgical Explorer.

By having resources for both the Novus Order and the Extraordinary Form we hope to serve as a bridge, emphasizing the continuity between the two forms of the Mass which is the essence of Pope Benedict’s Moto Proprio letter Summorum Pontificum, allowing the general use of the old form of the Latin Rite.

We still do not have the system working in all aspects, especially for the saint’s feast days and memorials and for the music but we hope to have it soon and we hope to add more features in the future. Eventually we will also link doctrinal information from several catechisms together along with Fathers of the Church and then provide links back from any particular doctrine to all our homilies that cover it. This should make AirMaria a premier site for priests to prepare for their homilies and enable us to offer a distinct FI Marian bent to a wide swath of homilists. 😉

SQPN Catholic New Media Celebration, Boston, Aug 6-7

We will be going to the Catholic New Media Celebration held by SQPN this Friday and Saturday in Boston. We are looking forward to meeting many zealous Catholics involved in Internet, Radio, and TV and we hope this includes some of you.

Coredemption Conference, Lacrosse WI, August 21st.

We are heading to Wisconsin toward the end of the month to film the Marian Conference at the National Shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse which will be on Saturday, August 21st. We hope to broadcast live as we did last year and we will have a great line up of speakers. If you are in the general area I hope you can attend and we will be able to say hello in person. It promises to be a monumental event with solid spiritual and intellectual nourishment. You can register here.

On Location DVDs

We are also configuring a system to burn DVDs on location at La Crosse so that we can offer them to people within 20 minutes of the completion of each talk. Not only should this be very popular and will provide yet another way to deliver our message, but we hope to use it for future events to offset some of the costs of these trips. Another advantage is that when the event is finished all the work is finished and so it will save us many hours of editing afterward, enabling us to add more events to our schedule and more content to AirMaria. So if there are any Marian conferences that you need filmed in the Northeast let us know. We can do other events as well but we want to focus on Mary since this is our main charism. We can travel further depending on the circumstances and donations.

2000 Subscribers on YouTube

Our YouTube channel is continuing to be very popular. We recently surpassed 2000 subscribers so whenever we post a video there, over 2000 people get notified. And we get many comments every day. Not all of them are on our side but even this is positive in that it shows we are engaging a broad audience.

Radio Update

Our station in Owego, NY is still operating with a 24 hour a day 7 days a week broadcast of EWTN and we have had many favorable comments and are pleasantly surprised with the range of our minimal transmitter. You can see our recent posts here and here. Our next phase is to increase the power of the station and to build a higher tower, four times higher! We have already submitted the license modification to the FCC. This would increase our audience from 20,000 to 125,000.

In New Bedford, MA we are currently drafting a tower lease. Once this is signed we could be on the air within three months. So our goal is December 8th. Keep us in your prayers. We need it! The sound studio there is also making great progress and should be fully functional on the day of the first broadcast.

Our station in Stockbridge, MA is also making progress. Also, many of our other close partners in the radio apostolate have had their licenses approved and we hope to announce how we intend to work with them in coming months.

Other news is that we received a very large donation of equipment for our sound studios from a professional sound studio of a close friend of ours in New York City who is moving to a new location. We made several trips to New York City carrying back loads of useful furnishings, acoustical panels and sound proof doors.  This will reduce the cost of setting up our other sound studios and has already helped with our video apostolate. Deo Gratias!

Again we are making so much progress with such few people and very little income. Be assured that you probably cannot find any place where your donation will go farther to advance the Gospel message and to promote devotion to Mary to a new generation than right here on AirMaria. Please be generous this month.

In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,

Fra Roderic