HISTORY
SDPB traces its roots to one of the first radio stations in South Dakota, WEAJ AM on the University of South Dakota campus in Vermillion. Though some experimental broadcasts took place earlier, WEAJ (now KUSD) was licensed for regular programming on May 27, 1922. Student E.O. Lawrence (who later won a Nobel Prize in physics) and University of South Dakota Dean Lewis Akeley are credited for putting the station on the air.

South Dakota Public Television first went on the air from Vermillion, as KUSD-TV, Channel 2, in 1961. The low-powered station, the first educational television station in the state, started by broadcasting to USD, then to the area near the school, and eventually to the entire state.

Radio FM broadcasting began in 1967, and KUSD-AM/FM out of the University of South Dakota in Vermillion and KESD-AM/FM out of South Dakota State University in Brookings were designated as “Public Radio” in 1968. In 1967-1968, with the help of federal and state funding, KUSD Public Television increased power and Public Television expanded to Rapid City on the western side of the state, some 386 miles away, and to Brookings, about 114 miles north. In 1967, the South Dakota State Legislature also created a managing Board of Directors to oversee growth of the network. The original mandate stressed educational television programming for every school in the state.

Over the 1970s and 1980s, additional television and radio transmitters were built across the state and, in the 1980s, Public Broadcasting in South Dakota was consolidated under the Educational Telecommunications Board of Directors with production and offices based out of Vermillion.

In the early 1990s, South Dakota Public Radio ceased AM operations and began broadcasting exclusively in FM.

Today, South Dakota Public Radio and South Dakota Public Television reach almost the entire state with 9 TV transmitters and 9 radio transmitters plus 10 radio translators and 9 television translators. The network has begun the conversion to digital broadcasting, a process that likely will continue through the first decade of the new millennium.

SDPB Online, at www.sdpb.org , has been in operation since 1996, when the Web page was first established. SDPB Online began broadcasting, with audio capabilities, in fall 1997.

Although education has been the primary goal from the beginning, SDPB Education and Outreach was formally recognized as a separate department within the network in 1997.

Educational Services evaluates, purchases and schedules instructional programming for K-12 classroom use and reviews and recommends other children’s programs on South Dakota Public Television. The department provides numerous workshops statewide stressing literacy. Under the Ready To Learn program, the department has provided some 50,000 books to children in Head Start, Early Head Start and Even Start programs.

MISSION

Who We Are

We are a vital community resource producing and broadcasting high quality, commercial-free programs and valuable community outreach projects that educate, enlighten and entertain.

We…	We are South Dakota’s locally owned and operated premiere public broadcasting network, serving over 90% of South Dakotans plus parts of six surrounding states with television, radio, and internet programming 24 hours a day.
are a vital community resource…	We are dedicated to meeting community needs, responding to public interests, promoting viewer and listener satisfaction, nurturing successful partnerships and encouraging an informed citizenry. We welcome a diversity of opinions and perspectives that increase public understanding of the issues affecting South Dakota and the world.
producing…	We produce quality programs and interactive content that preserve South Dakota’s history, examine issues of importance and relevance to South Dakotans and showcase local arts, culture and landscape.
and broadcasting high-quality…	We provide a wide variety of programs that represent the best in public affairs, local and national news, documentaries, arts and performances, science and nature, children’s programs, how-to series, and educational programs for classroom use.
commercial-free programs…	We are funded by the generosity of our public, not by commercial interests.
and valuable community outreach projects…	We complement our programs with outreach and educational activities that connect us closely to the community and improve the quality of life for South Dakotans.
that educate…	We are an indispensable educational institution that encourages lifelong learning. We provide a variety of instructional programs and resources to South Dakotans of all ages and interests. We use technology, including the Internet and distance learning, to help solve critical educational needs.
enlighten and entertain.	We are committed to celebrating artistic and scientific achievement and to expanding the horizons of all South Dakotans.

STRUCTURE

SDPB is a division of the state Bureau of Information and Telecommunications, a state agency. The state pays the salaries of SDPB employees, buys equipment for the network and provides space for the network operations through the University of South Dakota, a state-supported school.

SDPB operates under the guidance of the seven-member Educational Telecommunications Board, an organization first set up by the South Dakota Legislature in 1967. Members are appointed by the governor. The board sets goals, reviews expenditures and makes recommendations for the operation of the network.

The non-governmental fundraising arm, the Friends of SDPB (formed in 1973), is a 501(c)(3) organization that uses direct mail, fundraising drives, telemarketing, underwriting and grants to pay for programming and programming services for the network.

The Friends of SDPB is guided by a 12- to 16-member Board of Directors, which provides direction in fundraising activities and endowment decisions.

SDPB is divided into five areas – Television, Radio, Online, Educational Services, and Development and Marketing – each with its own area of expertise. The Executive Director of the network and the department heads make the day-to-day decisions for the network and prepare budgets and advance planning for network initiatives with the guidance of the Educational Telecommunications Board and the Friends of SDPB Board of Directors.

South Dakota Public Television
The largest of the departments, SDPB Television Production has 13 full-time employees. The department produced more than 100 hours of local programming during the past year. SDPB Television reaches more than 400,000 households in the state and region and a third of them tune in every week.

In 2001, SDPB Television earned an Emmy for “Lost Bird of Wounded Knee.” In 2002, the documentary earned the American Association for State and Local History’s highest national honor, the Award of Merit. In 2000, “Wild Horses: An American Romance,” a co-production, earned an Emmy and a Central Educational Network (CEN) first place award. In 2002, “I Watch,” a series of interstitials (between program elements), earned first place nationally from the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA) for Corporate/ Institutional Promotion.

The television broadcast day is 24 hours with the regular schedule usually running from 5 a.m. Central Time/4 a.m. Mountain Time to about 1 a.m. Central/midnight Mountain The regular schedule includes college-level telecourses; children’s programming during daytime weekday hours and Saturday/Sunday mornings; and news, science, history, drama, arts and informational programming geared for older students and adults in the evening hours and weekend afternoons. Saturday late mornings and afternoons are devoted to “how-to” programs ranging from sewing to gardening to home projects. In addition, the overnight hours are used to broadcast programming that teachers may tape and use later in the classroom plus telecourses.

South Dakota Public Television is affiliated with a number of national organizations including the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), the Central Educational Network, the National Educational Telecommunications Association and the Association of Public Television Stations.


SDPB Education and Outreach
Education and Outreach works closely with South Dakota Public Television and SDPB Online. The three-person department, directed by Elaine Larson, helps caregivers and parents use the programs on South Dakota Public Television to their best advantage. In the classroom, Education and Outreach uses online tools and printed materials to help educators throughout the state make use of TV and the Internet. Each weekday, a 1 ½ hour block of shows stressing math, science, language, history and more, is offered specifically for teachers. In addition, many teachers tape the overnight blocks of educational programming for later classroom use.

SDPB’s Education and Outreach staff helps children, educators, parents and the public make the best use of programs and resources with a number of programs:
• Quality instructional television programming provides teachers with content standards-based video resources for the classroom. Teachers can access these resources from overnight block feeds or weekday broadcasts of selected series. Many instructional programs are available via the Internet at sdpb.org/learning.
• The development of state-of-the-art resources and teacher guides, available on demand via the Internet, enables educators to utilize SDPB resources more effectively in the classroom.
• Education and Outreach staff, in affiliation with the PBS Ready To Learn project, distributes children’s books each year to Head Start, Early Head Start and Even Start students, encouraging disadvantaged families to read together. So far, 50,000 books have gone to South Dakota children.
• The Education and Outreach staff uses free workshops to train hundreds of parents and caregivers each year on early childhood development, media literacy and the importance of learning to read.
• Free inservice training for K-12 educators helps them use instructional television and online services in the classroom.
• The department promotes and facilitates community forums and discussions offering opportunities for community involvement related to programming.

More than 70 percent of the state’s teachers and numerous homeschoolers make use of SDPB resources in the classroom.


South Dakota Public Radio
South Dakota Public Radio has 10 full-employees plus 3 to 5 part-time employees. In addition, KCSD at the University of Sioux Falls provides a full-time news producer. The seven-member news team covers the entire state and regularly earns awards.

In 2002, SDPB Radio’s news team earned, for the second time, one of the most prestigious honors in the nation – a national Edward R. Murrow Award for documentary. In addition, Radio earned eight national awards from the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA). For the fifth year in a row, SDPB Radio earned awards in the double digits (20 in 2002) in the South Dakota Associated Press radio awards as well as the sweepstakes award for overall excellence. In 2001, SDPB Radio earned a national Edward R. Murrow Award; three national NAJA awards; and the national Jack R. Howard Trophy from the Scripps-Howard Foundation.

South Dakota Public Radio appeals to a wide audience with a mix of music, news/information and entertainment shows. South Dakota Public Radio is on the air 24 hours a day and more than one-third of the weekday schedule is locally produced. In addition to locally produced shows and reports, South Dakota Public Radio is affiliated with National Public Radio and Public Radio International.

South Dakota Public Radio is available statewide. According to a 2001 study by the Business Research Bureau at the University of South Dakota, SDPR has approximately 126,000 to 132,000 adult radio listeners across the state.


SDPB Online
www.sdpb.org has been recognized with first-place awards for the past three years in the South Dakota Associated Press radio awards. Nationally, sdpb.org earned the top Web Site honors in the PBS Communication Awards in 2000. In 2002, SDPB Online earned a national first place award for a PBS Web site, www.pbs.org/falconer, developed for PBS in conjunction with the SDPB Development and Marketing Department.

SDPB Online has 2 ½ employees plus season workers during the South Dakota Legislative Session.

Online offers teachers and home-schoolers across the state access to the resources of the Digital Dakota Network (DDN) as well as services for a wide variety of Web users:
• For Web browsers and educators there are more then 11,000 pages of materials and programming.
• For students, parents, relatives, friends and fans, the up-to-the-minute results of 20 annual high school competitions, ranging from sports to drama to speech.
• For radio listeners, South Dakota Public Radio’s programming is carried live, and much of the local programming is archived, so Web users with audio and video capabilities can tune in when it’s convenient.
• For TV viewers, archives of a number of South Dakota Public Television programs are available, so Web visitors can view programming on their schedules.
• For viewers and listeners, there are links to the Web sites for numerous programs, including locally produced Web sites like www.sdpb.org/tv/horses  or www.sdpb.org/tv/lostbird  or www.sdpb.org/tv/foss . There is even a national PBS site, www.pbs.org/falconer , created by SDPB Online to enhance a show picked up for national PBS use.
• For teachers, sdpb.online offers everything from detailed lesson plans to augment SDPB programming to actual audio and video of educational broadcasts, much of this through DDN.
• For students, it’s a valuable resource, linking them to a safe site with credible facts and information on a wide variety of topics.
• For Web surfers, it’s a source of enlightenment and entertainment with a variety of information from radio and TV as well as its own programming.

Many South Dakotans are connected to the Internet. In June 2002, AeA, an international network of high-tech companies, ranked South Dakota 31st nationally in computer penetration at 56 percent. In May 2002, MetaFacts, a national technology research service, placed South Dakota third nationally for computer penetration of households with children, at 86 percent. In August 2000, the Employment Policy Foundation of the Bureau of Labor Statistics ranked South Dakota 30th in computer penetration. Of that number, the EPF estimated 70 to 80+ percent, depending on location and income, had Internet access. By November 2002, the EPF estimates, nationally 85 to 90 percent of upper income households and 46 to 62 percent of lower income households will have computers and Internet access. Internet access is widely available throughout South Dakota through local telephone and utility companies and national carriers.

The public schools and the teachers in South Dakota have wide access to the Internet, with a ratio of two students to every computer in the schools.


SDPB Development & Marketing
The Marketing and Development Department includes six full-time employees of SDPB. In addition, the Director supervises 6½ employees at the Friends of SDPB.

Marketing and Development includes three people in marketing/public information who essentially work with all departments at the network to publicize and enhance their projects. Marketing/public information is responsible for SDPB Magazine – 22,000 monthly circulation – as well as press releases, newsletters, brochures, flyers, advertising and viewer and teacher guides, plus special events and marketing of videos and other products. A grants manager and a secretary round out the department.

Development employees, both at SDPB and Friends of SDPB, work closely with Television, Radio, Online and Education and Outreach on projects including direct mail campaigns and on-air and online fundraising.

The award-winning department has created several successful campaigns and earned national recognition including a first place PBS Development Award for Innovation in 2000; a PBS Communications Awards national first-place press kit in 2000; the 2002 first place from the National Educational Telecommunications Association for local promotional campaign; and the 2002 first place from the National Educational Telecommunications Association for Web site.


FRIENDS OF SDPB

Friends Board Presidents

1973-74 Dr. Richard Ritter, Brookings
1974-77 Murman Jensen, Wall
1977-79 Patrick McGraw, Sioux Falls
1979-81 Trudy Bahr, Mitchell
1981-83 John Rasmussen, Sisseton
1983-84 Pennie Kelley, Rapid City
1984 Eddie Clay, Hot Springs
1984-88 Mary Boyer, Rapid City
1988-89 James Krueger, Aberdeen
1989-90 James McCarville, Brookings
1990-92 Gail Eichstadt, Pierre
1992-94 Laurel Jensen-Wunder, Bison
1994-96 Dr. Ronald Becker, Sioux Falls
1996-97 Dr. Barbara Black, Yankton
1997-99 Dr. Ronald Becker, Sioux Falls
1999-01 Roy Wise, Aberdeen
2001-02 Jana Bastian, Belle Fourche
2002- Mary Tidwell


Public Broadcasting History:
1. FCC sets aside educational channels.
Key Federal Legislation:
• The Communications Act of 1934 is the basic federal regulatory document for all broadcasting in the U.S.
• The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 creates the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

2. Ford Foundation funds programs and funds Station Independence Program (SIP) SIP.
For several years, the Ford Foundation provided funds to produce programs. The vast majority of funds went to three stations in Boston and New York.
The Ford Foundation realized that this situation was creating a total dependency on them to fund programs. They created SIP to train stations how to fundraise and gain financial independence for programming.
A program trend was created by funneling all funds directly to these three stations. While the programs were excellent and high quality, they did not reflect the interests of the entire population.
In order to remedy this situation, President Richard M. Nixon implemented a policy allowing Federal funds for programming to be granted to individual stations and they bid on programs. Thus the primary stations that created programs had to respond to the desires/interest of the populace via the local Public Broadcasting stations.
• Before: Ford Foundation and the federal Government granted program funds to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) – the national office of Public Broadcasting. CPB sent the funds directly to the three stations to produce public broadcasting programs.
• After: Funds were presented to CPB. CPB then granted the monies to the individual stations. Every public broadcasting station in the country placed bids for the programs they wanted. They also could use the grant monies to produce programs in their own stations.
This process achieved its goal. PBS began producing a wide range of programs – some that appealed to virtually every segment of the population.

Friends of SDPB Is Born
• The Friends of South Dakota Public Broadcasting is organized in November 1973.
It is a private non-profit (IRS 501(c)3 status) organization committed to raising funds for Public Broadcasting programs and advocating government support for South Dakota Public Broadcasting.
• Fundraising begins in 1974
• The first festival (pledge drive) is held in March of 1975
• Charter members are considered all those who donated in 1974, 1975 and 1976.
As of 2/28/01, 596 Charter Members of Friends are still members:
1974 1975 1976
26 152 418


MISSION OF FRIENDS OF SDPB

The Mission of the Friends of South Dakota Public Broadcasting is to direct fundraising efforts for programs and program services on South Dakota Public Broadcasting. Elements of this mission are as follows:
1. To provide oversight for fundraising activities in order to ensure integrity and public accountability.
2. To provide bookkeeping, accounting and financial management of non-government funds in order to ensure maximum availability and interest earnings of these funds for programs and program services.
3. To cooperate and coordinate with management of South Dakota Public Broadcasting in program outreach, special events and volunteer activities.
4. To serve as Community Advisory Board for South Dakota Public Radio and Television.
5. To serve as an advocate for continued and adequate state funding for public broadcasting in South Dakota.


COMMUNITY SUPPORT

Public broadcasting is popular in South Dakota.
• The Friends of SDPB ranks well above average for 10 similarly sized states in percentage of members in relation to households. In 2001, of the 317,290 viewing households in the state, more than 21,000 were members of the Friends of SDPB, or more than 6 percent. The 10-state average is 4.7 percent (PBS figures).
• Some 200 to 300 volunteers travel to the SDPB Television studio each year to take viewer pledges over the telephone. Dozens of volunteers help at fair booths, events and other Friends of SDPB activities.
• More than 67,000 viewers tune into SDPB Television each night during primetime hours (2002 Nielsen Media Reporting figures).
• More than 70 percent of the state’s K-12 teachers are making use of SDPB educational materials.
• SDPB Radio, according to a 2001 study by the Business Research Bureau at USD, serves approximately 126,000 to 132,000 adult listeners in South Dakota.
• SDPB Online averages about 3,000 visits per day, and figures soar during special Web events. sdpb.org/statehouse draws more than 1,000 audio requests per day.