Thomas Daschle: “In 1953, Joe L. Floyd opened the doors of South Dakota's first television station, and began his mission to provide…”

“In 1953, Joe L. Floyd opened the doors of South Dakota's first television station, and began his mission to provide television programming to even the most remote areas of our State. Since then, South Dakotans have had the comfort of knowing there was somewhere they could turn to obtain critical local information and programming. Through tornados and blizzards, KELO-TV has been there. Today, I come to the floor of the Senate to congratulate KELO on its 50th anniversary. Providing television coverage to a rural State like South Dakota is no small challenge. The severe weather and vast distances make it difficult to get the airwaves into the homes of viewers, let alone to provide them with high-quality broadcasting and information in the manner KELO has over the years. In fact, after several towers were lost, many dubbed KELOLAND to be the Bermuda triangle of television towers. To KELO's credit, these setbacks never kept the station off the air for long, as their engineers scrambled around the clock to get the station up and running again quickly.”