FreethoughtMedia.com was first conceived in 1998 when Reginald Vaughn Finley, Sr.. began looking for freethought media on the web after he realized that he no longer could make himself believe in the mythologies given to him buy the "superstitious automatons of society". After a short while, after looking for freethought related material online, Reggie bumped into the AFL Show (Atheism, Freedom, Liberation) Show. It was hosted by a guy that went by the name, Jake. Reggie contacted Jake about his show and it's setup. Jake helped Reggie start his own show. Live with The Infidel Guy was born. Reggie's first website was hosted at Geocities.com, then, at Free_Speech_TV. While at freespeech.org, Jake and IG(Reggie) teamed up to create, The Atheist Network. After many hours of frustration, in 1999 the AN was finally running 24/7. We had many great show hosts such as Rob Sherman, the Religion is for the Weak show, Joe Zamecki's Atheist Citizen Patriot Show, John Patrick Michael Murphy, The AFL Show, The Infidel Guy Show, the Jazz, Blues and Atheism show, Screaming Monkeys, Gremlin Dot Net show, Beware of God and many others. The process to run the network was very manual and took up a lot of Jake and Reggie's time. Jake and Reggie soon realized that their current system was very unforgiving on time so with the help of Juan, aka Amoeba, a newer system was born. The "AN" continued for a year or so, but quickly were faced with tons of challenges such as hackers and hosts not producing shows. The AN went on hiatus and then was resurrected again in late 2003 with a whole new line up, Maximum Rock & Roll, The Non-Prophets, The Ask the Atheist Show and of course, The Infidel Guy Show. A huge server glitch shut the AN down completely in early 2005 and the show remained on hiatus ever since.
During this time, Jake and Reggie were secretly planning in the darkness to resurrect the AN but make it even better. After 300 hours of broadcasting Reggie began to see more of a need to focus more on freethought rather than atheism and proposed to Jake the idea of a "Freethought Media network".. the earlier idea Reggie had in 1998. Jake thought this was a grand idea and gave IG the go ahead. After many failed attempts, and thousands wasted to get a competent volunteer and paid staff together to program freethoughtmedia.com. IG gave up. Later in mid 2005. IG began to find very wonderful and helpful people to help with the site and also provide new ideas for FTM. Gotcha (Josh).. became IG's resident phpguru and most recently, Frank, a perl programmer. Brian Sapient (Rational Response Squad), an old-hack from the early AN days has come on officially as IG's internet publicist and is now producing his own show. These new additions have pushed infidelguy.com to a new level. This same crew has been largely responsible also for FreethoughtMedia.com's birth.
While all of this was going on, Jake, re-released the Atheist Network for a special Winter Festivus show. It was a hit. Jake felt that it was time to resurrect the AN but with a new format. The AN now plays tons of clips, music, and spoken word but nothing scheduled. Just a free-for-all of fun. FreethoughtMedia.com and AtheistNetwork.com are sister sites. Both are now up and ready to rock your rational mind. Both are currently accepting applications for new hosts and material.
