The Rise of Rural TV
Shows like “Duck Dynasty” and “Farm Kings” helped pave the way for an entire television network dedicated to all thing rural.
When Patrick Gottsch, the son of a Nebraska corn, soybean and alfalfa farmer, went to “investment banker types” asking for funds to create a television station for rural audiences, he was told that there wasn’t a market for a channel about people like, well, him.
Gottsch, a former satellite-dish installer and commodity broker, disagreed. When no one was willing to help foot the bill, he put up his own funds and started RFD-TV – a 24-hour channel devoted to all things rural that launched in 2000 on the Dish Network. With offices in Omaha and Nashville, Tennessee, RFD-TV now has more than 600 providers and reaches 63 million homes worldwide. It has a news-centric sister channel, RURAL TV, and a newly launched Sirius radio station called RURAL RADIO. The company’s gross revenues are slated to exceed $50 million in 2013.
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“We always say, ‘There are 400 channels out there for urban America.’ People ask who our competition is; we really don’t have any,” Gottsch says. “Everyone else pretty much ignores the land in between the airports.”
And that meant there was a lot of ground to cover. RFD-TV, whose name is a reference to rural free delivery, the U.S. Postal Service’s system for delivering mail to remote patrons, offers a curated mix of around 150 shows for farmers, ranchers and horse people alongside entertainment and music programming.
‘People ask who our competition is; we really don’t have any. Everyone else pretty much ignores the land in between the airports.’
Flip on RFD-TV and you can watch “Cookin’ Outdoors With Johnny Nix,” “I Love Toy Trains” or “Classic Tractor Fever.” The show “Tough Grit” pits neighbors against each other as they complete farm chores like mucking stalls. There’s “Mollie B Polka Party,” whose perky namesake travels America, introducing polka bands to dancers twirling in cowboy hats. Some of RFD-TV’s most popular fare includes “Hee Haw” reruns and “Gentle Giants,” a show about draft horses.
Gottsch (who claims he still reads every email sent to the company) says fans enjoy wholesome programming and the sight of rural America reflected on TV. And the content is squeaky-clean: Gottsch jokes they are the only channel that has never run a Viagra or Cialis ad.
If other programmers once ignored rural America, they’re taking notice now. Rural-based entertainment is becoming a booming business.
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Mollie B, of the RFD-TV juggernaut,
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Take “Farm Kings,” a reality show on the Great American Country network featuring the hardy, photogenic King family of Freedom Farms outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
That network began in 1995 with a country music platform and has since eased into a fifty-fifty split of music and “country lifestyle.” “Farm Kings,” which debuted in 2012, was the network’s first foray into reality programming and its most highly rated lifestyle show, that, oddly enough, shows actual farmers farming. “The drama is very organic, very true to who they are,” says Suzanne Gordon, vice president of programming for GAC. “When they’re waiting and waiting for rain and it finally comes and there’s golf ball-sized hail, and they lose $50,000 worth of their summer crop, that’s dramatic.”
Not that they’re above a little window dressing: Promotional material for the show features four muscular King brothers sans shirts. When asked if cameras had inspired him to disrobe a bit more frequently, Peter King, an affable guy with a head of unruly blond hair, jokes that perhaps this reporter is guilty of hitting her rewind button. “If I have my shirt off it’s because it’s dirty and it stinks and it’s just no good to wear anymore. I got a pretty good farmer’s tan going on.”
Part of the appeal of rural reality, says Lily Neumeyer, vice president of nonfiction and alternative programming for A&E, is that most scripted shows are usually written by urban-dwellers. She’s a producer of “Duck Dynasty,” the much-loved reality show about the bearded, camo-clad Robertson clan, who have built a Louisiana empire on handcrafted duck callers. “It’s refreshing to hear that people have their own way of saying things,” she says.
Rural reality programming did have a highly publicized tragedy in 2013, when one of the stars of MTV’s “Buckwild” died while “muddling” – driving a vehicle off-road in deep mud. But, still, viewers can expect to see more reality country fare, especially in the wake of the fantastic ratings for “Duck Dynasty.” GAC recently launched a new show starring a big country family, “The Willis Clan,” and A&E snapped up a series called “Rodeo Girls” that chronicles the “lavish and glamorous world of the women of the pro rodeo circuit.”
For Gottsch’s part, he says they’re just “scratching the surface” of what RFD-TV can do. After all, as he says: “Rural is cool again.”
(Photography Credits: Top Image: Zach Dilgard; 1. Zach Dilgard; 2. Courtesy Of RFD-TV; 3. Art Streiber; 4. Courtesy Of RFD-TV; 5. Great American Country.)
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