KRSD-TV

 ( 1958 Establishments In South Dakota ) 

Signal and regulatory problems continued. In September 1966 and October 1967, the FCC issued notices of violation to KRSD-TV and KDSJ-TV; Donald Wyatt, an FCC field engineer from Denver, later testified that of 40 stations he had inspected, they were "the poorest he had found in the entire district". The next year, the commission designated the two stations' license renewals for hearings, seeking to determine if the management was so "negligent, careless, or inept" that it could not be relied upon to serve as a licensee. In March 1969, hearings were held in Rapid City, at which scores of witnesses appeared. The head of the Rapid City chamber of commerce stated that local viewers were disappointed in the performance of the Heart of the Black Hills stations; Eli Daniels said the Associated Press report had mischaracterized his testimony and did not take a stand in favor of or against renewal. In July 1969, an FCC field inspector had deemed the stations' signal unfit for broadcast.

In July 1970, FCC examiner Thomas Donahue recommended a probationary one-year license renewal for KRSD-TV and KDSJ-TV, rather than the standard five-year renewal. Another major change occurred that year: the station exchanged primary network affiliations with KOTA-TV on September 13, switching from NBC to CBS, apparently after KOTA and NBC struck a deal.

The chief of the FCC's Broadcast Bureau, however, objected to the renewal proposal. By the time the full commission heard oral argument in October 1971, three more notices of violation had been issued, one to KRSD-TV and two to KDSJ-TV, on top of the 1966 and 1967 violations and additional notices issued in 1969. The litany of violations accumulated over the stations' time on air, from faulty tower lighting and spurious emissions to poorly kept logs and low-power broadcasts, plus a petition signed by 2,000 Rapid City viewers in 1967, resulted in the FCC finally losing patience with Heart of the Black Hills Stations. The commission voted 5-0 (with two abstentions) to deny the renewals outright and ordered both stations off the air by 12:01 a.m. Mountain Standard Time on December 31, 1971. The FCC found that Heart of the Black Hills had deprived the public of service and thus did not merit renewal.

The final decision noted that KRSD-TV had failed to correct numerous violations dating to 1961, including what were described as some of the worst violations that the commission had ever uncovered. A number of violations detected in 1966 and 1967 had not been corrected by the time of the 1969 inspection. For instance, the Danielses had failed to adequately maintain the lights on the station's transmitting tower, and there were numerous cases of spurious emissions; both violations posed serious air safety hazards. Additionally, the station's signal had deteriorated to the point of unacceptability as early as 1965. It also concluded that the violations had the effect of denying Black Hills viewers access to NBC programming and noted that it had been forced to maintain the waiver allowing cable systems to pipe in out-of-town NBC affiliates due to KRSD-TV's inadequate signal. All of this led the commission to conclude that Heart of the Black Hills Stations was not technically qualified to be a television licensee, finding that it had not fulfilled its requirement to provide "a satisfactory service to the public". In so doing, the commission upbraided Donahue for not fully considering the "serious and adverse impact" that Heart of the Black Hills' technical violations had on the Rapid City viewing public. While the FCC had ordered a handful of radio stations off the air for technical violations, it was the first time that a television station had been denied renewal for technical reasons.

The Danielses made good on their vow to appeal for reconsideration. However, in 1972, the FCC turned the appeal down. It found that those claiming KRSD-TV's picture had improved actually wanted to ensure access to CBS programming and the presence of a second choice for television, alongside KOTA-TV. The commission never intended to delete the channel 7 and channel 5 allocations and thus did not believe the Danielses could be trusted to run them in accordance with FCC rules and the public interest. When the FCC heard the Danielses' claim that the commission's refusal to allow it to buy a new antenna prevented it from raising enough money to improve its facilities, the commissioners concluded that Heart of the Black Hills did not have the financial wherewithal to be a television licensee.

Heart of the Black Hills took the case to federal appeals court, which upheld the decision in February 1973. In the wake of that ruling, a new company, Dakota Broadcasting Company, formed to seek new licenses for channels 7 and 5 and proposed an entirely new operation without using any of the facilities involved in broadcasting KRSD-TV or KDSJ-TV. The commission accepted Dakota's application in late May and set a period for potential other applicants to file. Heart of the Black Hills continued to fight, putting letter cards to mail to Congress in support of KRSD-TV in the Rapid City Journal newspaper.

Two applicants proposed to replace KRSD-TV and KDSJ-TV: Dakota Broadcasting and Western Television, a group with investors from Sturgis and Sioux Falls. Both sought interim operation while the FCC decided the fate of their applications; the two companies had a series of disagreements on technical issues, and the FCC ordered them to craft a joint proposal. The commission proposed to give Western interim authority if it allowed Dakota to join it. While Western hoped to be on the air by the end of the year, Western's plans hit a major snag after the death of Morton Henkin, chairman of its board of directors, in August. That event prompted the National Bank of South Dakota to advise Western that its $650,000 loan agreement would need to be renegotiated, which in turn led Dakota to ask for more financial information from Western. In October, that company's stockholders then withdrew their application.

Rapid City was left with just one television station for more than four months, causing the local cable company to record a surge in new subscribers. Two-station service was restored when KOTA-TV, branded as "Action 7 & 5", began telecasting on July 11, 1976, as primary ABC affiliates. In June 1980, a judge awarded the Associated Press a $1,210 judgment for services rendered to the former KRSD-TV after a breach of contract suit against Heart of the Black Hills Stations seeking payments for the wire service used by KDSJ radio and KRSD-TV.

KOTA and KEVN carried some CBS programming in Rapid City, but the market would not have a full-time CBS affiliate until KELO-TV of Sioux Falls established KCLO-TV in 1981. The Rapid City KELO translator and KFXS used KRSD-TV's former tower, which Daniels continued to own. The KDSJ-TV transmitter building burned in a 1981 fire.