The Ted Turner Of Rural TV

Give Patrick Gottsch credit for candor in building his 24-hour cable television network for rural America. "I've never had an original idea in my life. We've stolen all of our concepts from urban media," he laughs, standing on the deck of a sailboat off the coast of Maui in January. It's taken Gottsch 10 years to hit cruising speed. He launched his channel, RFD-TV, in 2000 using old re-runs from the Nashville Network and a new concept: bridging the rural divide between farmers and ranchers. To do this, he blended four program genres: agriculture, horses, rural living and country music. Any one of those niches might have failed, but as a mix they aggregate a Nielsen-rated audience of 13 million weekly viewers from small towns and farm communities across the U.S. "No matter where you go, agriculture is important. Everybody's gotta eat," says Gottsch. He has a point, but how hungry is the audience? "There are 27 million television homes outside urban areas in the U.S., most with no access to media coverage of agriculture issues or rural lifestyles," he says...read more