Media activist and community Internet pioneer Wally Bowen has died at the age of 63. Bowen was the founder of Mountain Area Information Network, a nonprofit community Internet service provider. He also founded WPVM, “The Progressive Voice in the Mountains,” a low-power FM community radio station in Asheville, North Carolina. Bowen challenged the broadcast license of Sinclair Media, the corporation that controlled Asheville’s only over-the-air television station, which Bowen and others accused of partisan political programming during the 2004 election season. Here is Wally Bowen speaking on Democracy Now! in 2009.

Wally Bowen: “My background is journalism, so I always—you know, I was wanting to bridge the digital divide but also create sustaining revenue for journalism. And so, that’s what we’ve been moving toward all these years. And five years ago, we launched WPVM, a low-power FM radio station, and brought Democracy Now! for the first time to Asheville public access TV. So we’ve been concentrating our efforts on creating media infrastructure that is grounded in our community and beholden to our community and not beholden to Wall Street.”

Wally Bowen died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, last Tuesday in Asheville, North Carolina.