 Welcome to Insight. Today we are chatting with Bill Sanford, Jeff Hanks, and Dennis Wyman of Lakeland Public Television about the importance of public television to community. They have generously agreed to share some of their experience with us. And I'd like to thank you all for joining us today. Thank you. So I've really been looking forward to this because you're the professionals. I focus on nonprofits, and it's really important to talk about and unpack the importance of public media to community, particularly in North Central Minnesota, the broadcast area that you serve. Could you talk a little bit about the broadcast area, Bill? You're the general manager here. Could you talk about the broadcast area, the communities that you serve, and the number of people that benefit from your services? Sure. We serve a large geographic area from down in Central Minnesota in the Little Falls area, up all the way pretty much to the Canadian border, and then a big swath east and west as well. So it's a large geographic area, but the largest communities that we serve are Bemidji and Brainerd, which are under 15,000. So it's a challenge providing, being a local entity to all these different small communities. But it's a challenge that we're working hard on meeting. And you also have within that broad geography people who live very different lives. You have people who are serving small urban environments. You have people who are farmers and might be somewhat remote. You have native communities. And you have all sorts of different industries in this area. So the needs and the interests of your broadcast viewers are as diverse as any large market, yet they are geographically dispersed, and it provides some news coverage challenges, doesn't it Dennis, as the news director? Well, it certainly does. And as Bill mentioned, the viewing area from one end to the other is about 250 miles. And because of that, we have two separate offices with news personnel to cover the varying region. And there are definitely different stories in different parts of our viewing area. As you mentioned, the farming community is a big portion when you go west and also south, closer to Bemidji and Grand Rapids. We have more logging industry and things like that. And the key is to have enough reporters to cover the miles you need to get to some of these stories. And we have two reporters in our Brainerd office and three reporters in our Bemidji office, which allows us to get out and cover all these small towns in our area. And the logistics is also very complex. You have to worry about transmitters. You have to worry about how do you actually connect with your audience, even understanding how the audience connects with your programming is a challenge. Can you talk about the extent of your operations, Jeff? You're the production manager. Yeah, the programming and production manager. And I guess the big thing I would like to point out is that unlike the big broadcast networks, commercial networks within PBS and Lakeland of course, our programming schedule and the productions really themselves, they belong to our viewers. They belong to our citizens in our coverage area. So we really try and tailor our programming schedule and our productions to what they need. We have community advisory councils we work with. We listen to them, we get feedback from our viewers with a preference poll. But I try and tailor that programming schedule to what our diverse audience needs. We try and feature as much Native American programming as we can. We have a dedicated First Nations Experience broadcast channel for Native American programming. The productions we do, we try and tailor for what the people in our area, they want to see. We do a lot of local arts, culture and history. And it's very specific to the towns and people within North Central Minnesota. We do the newscast, we've done sporting events. You know, geography kind of determines your destiny in different ways. And I think that led to our newscast and it led to some of the productions we're doing. And you also, on a literal shoestring, you generate amazing content and amazing programming as professional as any that you would find in this nation. And you have such a modest footprint but a powerful footprint. How many different channels do you have? And talk about the way those channels are shaped and the technology that you use to provide them. Sure, we broadcast six different channels. We've got everything from a dedicated kids channel to FNX Jeff mentioned that serves Native American folks. You know, the interesting thing about FNX too is we've got a lot of feedback from the non-Native folks too that they really find it interesting to learn more about the culture because there really is a divide in between the Native American community and the rest of the area. A divide in knowledge, a divide in exposure and there are historical divides. And just community, I mean, just even geographic, you know, while their native are certainly interspersed, I mean, you know, with the reservations, there's even a geographic divide. So I think a lot of people really don't understand the culture very well. So I think FNX has been an opportunity to help present that to folks. So I think that's been good. And it's a safe space as well. There's a way that you can access knowledge and then emerge from your home really more equipped to deal with people that you're going to be interacting with every day anyway. Sure, sure. So, you know, that's one of the channels. We have a channel that doesn't have any kids programming. So for grown-ups that tune into most PBS stations during the day, you're gonna watch kids programming but we have a channel we call Lakeland Plus that is all primetime type of programming. Another channel that's really interesting, we collaborate with all the public television stations in Minnesota on a channel called the Minnesota Channel and that is all content that is generated in this region, in the Midwest. So it's none of the national programming and we all contribute content to that. The channel originates out of Twin Cities Public Television but all of the stations in Minnesota and some of the surrounding states contribute content to that channel. So it's kind of an interesting look at our region. So you actually share. So your news people are actually going out and you're creating content and then of that content, a subset of that is shared across the state and the region. Our news is local to our station because news obviously is, you know, we try to be as local as possible with our newscast. So our news really does focus on our region. So our nightly news isn't carried on the Minnesota Channel but we do a series called Common Ground which highlights local artists and events and things throughout the region that's carried on the Minnesota Channel and some of our other content as well. And that sharing is really unique. The whole idea of creating content, sharing it, putting out to the public, not having it tied to advertising, not having it necessarily tied to an earned income stream is very unique. Talk about how you develop the resources required to serve the public in this way. You know, that's always a challenge. That's the biggest challenge I have in a small market like this and it's typical for all small market PBS stations. You know, we're pretty reliant on state and federal funding. It's a big piece of our budget but we also do get great support from businesses from around the region and from individuals. So we talk about it as a three-legged stool. You know, there's some state funding on one leg, federal funding on the other and then local dollars. It's a challenge and you know, both our state and federal funding, some people don't realize that their $36 gift isn't gonna really make that big of a difference but it does because our state and federal funding is matching. So those individual gifts do make a big difference and we really do rely on that. So somebody that's making a $36 contribution may think, well, that's not really gonna matter. It really does matter, they all add up. How do you ensure that the news that you cover is relevant to the community, is valued by the community and is watched by the community? To do a newscast for just Bemidji is not the resources to be able to do it. To do a newscast for just Brainerd, we don't have the resources to be able to support that but when we incorporate all our cities in our viewing area, that's what we're able to do. So that's our challenge and we try to get to as many of the small cities in our viewing area as much as we can. A lot of times our sports coverage will get us into those cities. Before we started this local newscast, which was 19 years ago now, these small high schools in this area had no TV coverage at all. Since we've come in, we get to a ton of local high school games and in those communities, that's a big thing. That's a big thing going on. So beyond our news coverage in those cities, we get into there with sports as well as our weather coverage, which we hear all the time about how the other stations don't have accurate forecast for this part of the state and how our forecast is tailored for the lakes country and for North Central Minnesota and we hear a lot of positives about that as well. So when you balance your programming schedule between news, between human interests, between sports coverage, between entertainment, how do you make those decisions to ensure that you have balance in your programming? Well, a large part of our programming schedule, the prime time, we're a PBS affiliate, of course. So you take also supplied. Yeah, we carry all the quality natures, Nova's Masterpiece theaters, those are called Common Carriage. Those are very important. A lot of people look to us as a PBS station just as much as they do a local station looking for that, the Don't Naby type of thing. So it's important that we provide that to people. But at the same time, we, like Bill and Dennis would say, we really try and focus on the local service. So we put a lot of emphasis throughout the entire schedule on trying to fit in that local aspect whenever possible. Now you also have to run as a business. So you have to hire people. You have to train them. You have to retain them. There are always some challenges with those three. Talk about how you shape the organization as an operating entity that has the talent and the competencies required to, when 10 o'clock runs around, you're there, you're on camera and you're delivering the news. And you have a team in back of you and the cameras are on, the operators are there, the staff is there, the broadcast is going to happen. How do you ensure that you have the team that can do all that? Well, that is a challenge. We're very fortunate that we've got a core committed group of people in our management team that have been with the station for many years. Dennis has been with us since the start of news. Jeff has been with us a long time. Our operations manager, our engineering manager, folks like that have been with the station for many, many years. That said, we are a small market station. We have a lot of turnover. News reporters, typically Dennis, what, a year and a half? We're under no illusion that we're going to have these reporters here for a long period of time. It's going to be a short amount of time and we work to get them up to speed as quick as we can. And then we're happy for them when they get the next job. Do you have the same challenges in terms of retaining people on the production side and on the programming side? Not nearly to the same extent. We have a fantastic group of early talented production people here, gentlemen, a couple of guys who work in our arts, culture, and history programming. They've been with us for a while now. And our staff, producer, directors, of course, who work on just many different things. From newscast to the sporting events we've covered, to the other documentaries. We're a smaller market and they do tend to come and go, but not nearly to the extent of the newscast. What was so intriguing to us and was so exciting to us is the entrepreneurship that you exhibited in working with us to ensure that non-profit organizations in the region are being covered. So this type of partnership that we're modeling right here at this table and the type of partnership that you described, Jeff, is also part of the innovation that you bring to your own programming so that you can serve the community in the way that you do. When you approached us and me and talked to us about doing the series, we were excited about it. I was very excited about it because we're serving a very low income area and the non-profits are really an integral part of this community. They make such a big difference and the people that watch the series and see all the great interviews that you've done are gonna see that. And I was just pleased that we're able to partner and highlight these folks and all the good work that they're doing. And the knowledge that you bring to your work and the knowledge that your other non-profits in North Central Minnesota have is such a gift to the non-profit world and to the public media world. Bill Samford, Jeff Hanks, Dennis Wyman, thank you so much for helping us out in exposing the great work of Lakeland Public Television and thank you all so much for your insights.