RFD-TV Gaining in Popularity

Since Patrick Gottsch put RFD-TV back on the air in 2000 from Fort Worth, Tex., the popular television cable network has begun to offer everything rural: farm reports, cowboy poetry, country cooking, classic tractors, traditional country music, polka, trains, rodeos and programs on rural heritage. The network now serves 30 million households in all 50 states and another 20 million homes in Brazil enjoy selected programming via a sister network, Terraviva.

Gottsch, a Nebraskan who was reared in Elkhorn just outside Omaha, actually started the network in 1987, the same year he became the nation's largest private satellite retailer. The network left the airwaves four years later when Gottsch moved to Fort Worth to become sales director for Superior Livestock Auctions.

Since returning to the airwaves, Gottsch's Rural Media Group empire includes RFD-TV, RFD HD that operates from Nashville, RFD-TV The Magazine with 140,000 subscribers, and RFD-TV The Theatre, a venue in Branson, Mo., that features a weekly lineup of popular country and western entertainers from Willie Nelson to Loretta Lynn. The nation's only 24-hour network serving the needs and interests of rural America, RFD-TV pays homage to Rural Free Delivery, the U. S. Postal Service's 19th century mail program for country folks.

"It's always been our goal to connect rural and city," said Gottsch. "It's important for urban-centered people to reconnect with the country. We're targeting an area that's been ignored and our viewers tell us we're right."

According to COO Ed Frazier, a pioneer of local televised sports and founder of Home Sports Entertainment, a large portion of the network's viewers are urban dwellers. "At first, we thought most of the viewers would be from rural areas but, to our surprise, we found 20 percent of them are in the city," he said. "People who have never had an interest in rural America are tuning in and becoming attracted to what we have to offer."

On Feb. 2, the network will broadcast the Fort Worth Stock Show's Sale of Champions, when young entrepreneurs sell their steers, barrows, lambs and goats, according to an article in the Fort Worth Business Press http://www.fwbusinesspress.com/display.php?id=6978

"RFD-TV continues to grow and change broadcast TV as we know it," said Jim Kelley of Superior Livestock Auction. More people are tuning in each year to find out what's new and fun in the country.