Argus-Leader from Sioux Falls, South Dakota • Page 15

Lifefeatures- lArgus Leader, Sioux Falls, S.D. Thursday, October 3, 1985 5B SaltesmmaifilS Joe Floyd builds a multimillion-dollar entertainment empire events to meet influential people in Continued from 1B manager for Colgate-Palmolive Co. The company's Colgate Hour was one of the most popular shows on television at that time, and Floyd thought that if he could get Colgate to buy time on his station, it would legitimize KELO-TV in the eyes of many other programmers and advertisers. Intense lobbying by Floyd convinced Laboda to buy KELO and provide his program on film, a precedent for Colgate. KELO needed film because it was the first station to go on the air without a hook-up to the network, in those days achieved via telephone line.

Bomb time Floyd spent the better part of the next four years in New York, promoting KELO and his developing network of KELO-Land stations, KDLO in Garden City and KPLO in Reliance. He promoted from sunup to sundown, Nord says, making sales calls during the days and attending social functions at night. Floyd refused to consider that KELO might fail; he willed its success, says Nord, who often teamed with Floyd in New York. Floyd is an engaging companion, his many close friends say, and he used cocktail parties and social bombs'in airports." Floyd didn't get arrested, McGovern says, but he did get a stern lecture. Friend and Sioux Falls businessman Max Pasley says he sees Floyd almost daily when both are in town, often to swap stories over a scotch at the end of the day.

Even when travels keep them apart, they share the cocktail hour. "When Joe's down in Ocean Reef (his vacation home in Florida) and he gets lonely, he'll call me up." The two will pour drinks and have a long-distance cocktail hour. But Floyd's friends say he's more than just a good drinking buddy. "He's always there if you need anything," Pasley says, "if you have him for a friend, you have a true friend. Anything you want, he'd be there to help you." Still on the move Floyd's enthusiasm and positive attitude infect the people around him, friends say, and his travels and hobbies give him a wealth of stories to entertain with.

He's easily drawn into telling stories from his early days in the theater business in Minneapolis. The first time he met Will Rogers, the humorist asked Floyd how many shows he'd have to perform. "I said, four a day and on Saturday and Sunday, five. Then he asked me how many newspapers we had. I say four.

"He says, 'Where am I going to get a fifth I tell him I can get one in St. Paul. So he says, 'Here's what I want you to do. Stand in the wings and hand me a newspaper when I go on Floyd did. "He'd walk out on stage and open up the paper and say, 'I see by the He'd go on for 30 minutes, and he never saw the paper before I handed it to him.

Each show was a new show; he'd have the audience in stitches. And all I had to do was give him a paper." Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Howard Hughes and other celebrities are the stars of other Floyd stories. Consistent with his involvement in movies and television, Floyd is a camera bug. He's taken news footage and stills when accompanying McGovern and Sen. Larry Pressler on Congressional trips around the world.

He loves deep sea fishing, and until last year, he and Pasley co-owned a 50-foot fishing boat at Ocean Reef. During the 1950s and 60s, Floyd hopped between Midcontinent's properties in a company plane he took delight in piloting. "He's the one who got the company involved in airplanes," partner Larry Bentson says. "He's also the one who got us into boats." in the Argus about a study by the Rand Corp. which said the South Vietnamese troop strength was much lower than was being reported by the military.

Joe saw that, and he was willing to tell a high-ranking U.S. officer that he was full of baloney." The second occurred during a 1978 tour of Africa. Floyd and McGovern met with Bishop Desmond Tutu and South African Prime Minister P.W. Botha. Again Floyd displayed his ability to see beyond the surface.

"He was appalled by the lack of spirit of compromise" in South Africa, McGovern says. "It was perfectly clear to Joe then that something was going to blow if the government didn't compromise. He couldn't understand why the government wouldn't meet with Tutu and work something out. That's the way he'd have handled it if it was a business deal. He said within 10 years, this place was going to be in flames." Floyd credits his success to his friends: "Most of it has come through our acquaintances." He prides himself in being a man who keeps his word.

"When I tell someone something, I mean it," he says. He expects the same in return. "The key is being in the right place at the right time, and recognizing you're there." TeleUDSDOITDZ Floyd foresaw its potential and Although bad knees and a serious stroke he suffered four years ago have slowed his pace, Floyd is alert, in charge at Midcontinent's Sioux Falls offices and usually on the go- "He's just a warm, stimulating friend." McGovern says. "I've had more laughs and more good cheer with Joe Floyd than any other single person. You're never bored when you're around Joe.

He's enthusiastic about life and his friends." Floyd's success stems from his ability to know what people want. "Joe always had an intuitive knowledge about what the public would respond to," Bentson says. "He's a real grassroots thinker." Floyd is observant and perceptive, McGovern says. He cites two examples of Floyd's foresight. The first involves a briefing with a U.S.

general midway through the first of two trips to Vietnam that Floyd made with McGovern. The general was explaining how many South Vietnamese soldiers were helping the U.S. fight the Viet Cong. "Joe kept saying, 'Where are they? I haven't seen any of them. All I've seen is American McGovern recalls.

The general stuck by his figures. "When we got off the plane (on our return) there was an small item capitalized on clear line of distribution. A Milwaukee distributor, for instance, didn't need viewers in Wausau and LaCrosse and he didn't want to pay for them. So the economies that boosted KELO profits were absent in Wisconsin. During the 1950s, Midco also got in and out of radio in Des Moines, Iowa, and acquired WLOL-AM in Minneapolis, and got a Madison radio property with the television station it bought; its chain of theaters also continued to grow.

But television was the jewel in Midco's crown. Nord says it has remained so to this day. Much of Midco's diversification stems from its growth into cable television. Floyd was one of the earliest cable proponents. In 1966, he and Bentson began touring the region, acquiring franchise rights before competitive bidding for the business began.

Midco built its first cable system in the Black Hills in partnership with the Duhamel family of Rapid City. The company hired Floyd's son, Joe to oversee construction. Building Midco's cable systems came in two waves. The first, in 1968, strung cable wire in many rural towns and followed the completion of a microwave network throughout South Dakota by Telecommunication Inc. The microwave link provided distant television signals to the rural cable systems, Joe.

H. says. In 1972, Midco began building systems in larger cities after the Federal Communications Commission lifted its ban on major market construction. "Cable was a funny phenomenon," Joe H. says.

"Most things start in the big cities and grow out to the rural areas. Cable was just the opposite. It started in the rural areas that couldn't receive television signals, then came to the cities." Investors saw the high rate of potential subscribers in small towns, applied those percentages to cable systems in cities, and got excited. But the experience in cities didn't match expectations. My anSWer by Billy DEAR DR.

GRAHAM: I think you need to change your ideas about what is right and wrong. A generation ago I know it would nave been frowned upon for me to live with my boyfriend (as I am now doing), but now nobody makes any comment about it. Times change, and so should our ideas about morality. K.N. DEAR K.N.: Suppose one day, as you were looking out a second story window, you said to yourself, "I have decided the law of gravity is old-fashioned.

It was all right for people a generation ago, but it is out of date now. So I think I'll step outside this window and go for a walk." You know as well as I do what would happen: You would go crashing to the ground, probably injuring yourself very se I me television industry informally. The World Series parties KELO hosted at New York's Warwick Hotel are legend: Hundreds of advertising and television executives eating, drinking and cheering their favorite team on Floyd's tab. They were grand affairs. The last bash set Floyd back $30,000.

"He loved it. He loved every minute of it," Nord says. "He was very good at it. But those parties also had a purpose." That was to sell KELO-Land stations. "It was fun for him, but it also was business for him." Floyd's reputation survives today on Madison Avenue, although he curtailed his activities there in the 1960s.

Floyd still loves to socialize; the 5 p.m. cocktail hour is a daily ritual. George McGovern, a Floyd traveling companion and confidant for more than 20 years, says Joe was always good for morale on trips. "He liked to drink and he had a saying about the cocktail hour," the former U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential nominee says.

"He'd call it 'bomb At 5 p.m., he'd say, 'It's bomb "One time he said that while we were walking through the Los Angeles airport. A security guard heard it and grabbed him and told him it was against the law to talk about been in radio, and he had worked at Minneapolis station WMIN-AM since his grade schools days. He was the station manager at the time, and his family was putting WMIN-TV, Channel 11, on the air in Minneapolis. The station operates today as WUSA-TV in Minneapolis. Despite a limited budget, the trio decided to activate KELO's television license and put Sioux Falls' first television station on the air.

The community was enthusiastic. However, "there were no televisions in Sioux Falls when we got the license," Floyd says. KELO signed on the air in 1953 without television cameras. They cost about $80,000 each, and the Midco partners couldn't afford that. All of KELO's programming came on film, which was transformed into broadcast signals at the station's first transmitter in Shindler, southeast of Sioux Falls.

KELO was the first station to begin broadcasting without television cameras. By 1954, KELO had arranged a network hookup out of Omaha, but it wasn't until 1955 that the station bought its first television cameras. In the meantime, KELO featured a Floyd invention called "live film." Evening news programs were filmed in midafternoon, developed through an agreement with Harold's Film Service in Sioux Falls, edited and sent to a transmitter. Newscasts did not present a problem, other than the time delay. But weather reports couldn't give current temperatures.

"This was solved by filming the weatherman giving the general weather information, and when it was time to report the current temperatures, the weatherman would simulate a call to the weather bureau; this was followed by a short period of silence on the film," graduate student William Craig McNamara wrote in a 1969 thesis on the KELO-Land stations. "When the film was televised, an announcer in the studio would fill in the silent portion with the current temperatures. It was this combi- new and untried or you could get into a peck of trouble. LIBRA (Sept. 23 to Oct.

22): Be sure you carry through with what you have promised your mate. Later, avoid one who wants to make radical changes. SCORPIO (Oct. 23 to Nov. 21): Be willing to compromise with an associate who is stubborn, then later you have much work to take care of.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22 to Dec. 21): Show that you are steady at your work and don't do anything that could alienate an associate. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22 to Jan.

20): Think about pleasures you have enjoyed and make arrangements for more of the same in the days ahead. AQUARIUS (Jan. 21 to Feb. 19): You nave to be very tactful at home in the morning so as not to aggravate the situation there. Avoid a demanding person.

PISCES (Feb. 20 to March 20): Get at your desk work early and be wise in handling correspondence, telephone discussions, etc. Rest at home in the evening. (C(((( (((((( TAPE YOUR OWN MOVIES Cameras 16.66, Recorders $6.66 Mon-Th. Players $4.44 Sun-Th.

VIDEO MANIA 111 Htm Opm 7 11-11 JM-imVf Men (((t (ct((((( WW. A. jjs There are no words that can fully express our appreciation for the Benefit for Evelyn and Glenda. The turnout was tremendous thanks to everyone. A special thanks to the organizers, all the workers and those who donated.

To everyone, thank you and God Bless you. Chuck, Evelyn Dawn The Huizenga families The Nelson families 1 nation of filming and live announcing that Joe Floyd dubbed live film. From the beginning, Floyd wanted KELO to be a dominant regional station. "Our idea was, we didn't want to have a small television station. We had to expand the Sioux Falls market to make it a viable operation," Evans Nord, now the president of KELO, says.

The first expansion came in 1955 when KDLO-TV, Channel 3, went on the air. The station had its own studio and live programming capabilities, but it carried most of the same programming as KELO-TV. Situated in Garden City, midway between Wa-tertown, Huron and Aberdeen, KDLO served all three markets. Two years later, at the urging and with the financial assistance of citizens in central South Dakota, Midco established KPLO-TV, Channel 6, in Reliance. It was the link that formed the KELO-Land stations, but it was a link Midco almost lost.

Floyd had promised to split the $300,000 start-up costs at the station with the communities of Winner, Chamberlain and Pierre. Midco would operate the station and provide its network programming. When other stations in South Dakota heard of Midco's proposal, they made similar bids. Winning the right to broadcast in central South Dakota involved a lot of door-to-door selling by Floyd, and finally, an all-night drive from Chicago to Kennebec so he could attend the deciding meeting and make his last appeal. Residents from the three communities were impressed that Floyd appeared in person; the owners of the other two stations remained at the broadcasters convention in Chicago that Floyd had left.

On the strength of his personal appearance, Floyd landed the Reliance station for Midco. Airing KPLO-TV was an important step for Midco. "By putting three stations together and calling them KELO-Land, we made Sioux Falls a major television market," Nord says. "We got it ranked in the Top 100, although Sioux Falls' rank in population was 230 or so. Ask Andy Andy sends the Star Wars Question and Answer Book About Space to Colleen Lord, age 15, of Chester, for her question: WHEN DID THE PEACE CORPS START? The Peace Corps is an organization of American men and women who work to raise living standards of people in developing nations.

Congress created the Peace Corps in 1961 as a United States government agency. In 1971, the Peace Corps became part of ACTION, a new agency that combined several volunteer programs. The idea of an army to work for peace was more than 50 years old when President John Kennedy set up the Peace Corps. An American philosopher named William James first suggested the idea in a speech in Boston in 1904. James developed his idea more fully in a pamphlet that was published in 1910.

He suggested forming a youth peace army to handle important civilian projects. During World War II and in the years following, many private "Advertising budgets in those days were set up for the Top 50 markets, or the Top 100 markets. Being in the Top 100 was very important to us." Floyd also tuned in KELO-Land's financial picture in 1957 by switching networks. NBC refused to grant a rate increase Floyd thought was justified by his increased viewership in central South Dakota. CBS made a generous offer at the same time, so Floyd accepted.

"That was the hardest decision I've ever made," he says, but one he's never regretted. Nor has CBS had regrets. For the last 11 years, KELO-Land has ranked No. 1 among CBS affiliates in market share. Joining the Top 100 markets made the KELO-Land stations highly profitable, and television quickly became the focus of Midco.

Starting in 1957, the company began to assemble a television network in Wisconsin to go with its stations in South Dakota and Minneapolis. Midco bought WKOW-TV, an ABC affiliate in Madison, and WKOW-AM radio in 1957. In 1959, the company put WAOW-TV on the air in Wausau, and a year later began broadcasting in LaCrosse, on WXOW-TV. The partners tried to duplicate in Wisconsin the success of KELO-Land in South Dakota. But Floyd recalls that they never attained the same results.

The "distribution flow," a concept Floyd had conceived in the early days of KELO, was fragmented in Wisconsin. South Dakota has one distribution center: Sioux Falls. Just as merchandise flowed out of Sioux Falls for destinations throughout the state, KELO beamed its signals across South Dakota from a base in Sioux Falls. Midco's network was matched perfectly to the flow of goods in the state, and thus attractive to advertisers. But in Wisconsin, there was no single distribution center.

Madison looked to Milwaukee, while Wausau fell under the Green Bay sphere of influence, Floyd said. LaCrosse, on Wisconsin's western border, had no groups thought about setting up internal work camps. They followed the example of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization which started its first international projects in 1917. In January, 1960, Rep. Henry Reuss, and Sen.

Richard asked Congress to study the possibilities of a youth corps program. Later that year, Sen. Hubert Humphrey. asked Congress to create a Peace Corps. Kennedy then used the proposal as a campaign issue in the 1960 presidential election.

On March 1, 1961, President Kennedy set up the Peace Corps. Later that year. Congress made the agency permanent. The first volunteers trained at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.. in 1961.

Sargent Shriver was the first director of the Peace Corps. He served until January, 1966. In the early 1970s, about 7,500 Peace Corps volunteers and trainees were serving in 60 countries. it Stringing cable is far more costly in urban areas, Joe H. says, and subscribers are fewer because there is an abundance of broadcast stations available in most cities.

Cable television developed a bad reputation in many investment circles, but Joe H. says Midco's cable systems have been profitable. As subscribers from Midco's cable division grew, the company found it needed expensive computers to keep track of accounts and to issue billings. It also needed an answering service to accept customer calls and dispatch servicemen. Rather than buy data processing time from other companies who had large computers, Midco decided to enter the data processing business.

It formed Midco Data Service to do its billings and provide data processing for other companies. Midco got into the answering business by necessity. The answering service it had under contract in Aberdeen was about to go under, so Midco bought it. Today, Midco provides the service not only for its cable companies but also for utilities, ambulance companies and professionals. With its newly developed computer capabilities, Midco was perfectly suited to enter the long-distance communications business after the courts had authorized competition with in the 1970s.

In recent years, the pace of acquisitions has quickened at Midco. Since 1981, the company has acquired all or part of a concession foods distributor in Phoenix, an entertainment mall in Bismarck, N.D., with Midco theaters as a tenant; and a marina at Lewis and Clark Recreation Area near Yankton. Bentson says Midco will look at any entertainment or communications-related businesses. He plugs the financial data from potential acquisitions into computer models he has developed to see how Midco can improve the bottom line. Says one observer, "They just look at the numbers, and if they re good, they'll buy it," Graham verely.

It would be absurd to think you could suspend a physical law just because you wanted to. Spiritual and moral laws do not change, either. They do not change because God gave them to the human race and God does not change. And when we go against them and act as if they do not exist, we only hurt ourselves. You have touched on one of these laws: God made it clear that sexual relations outside the covenant of marriage are wrong.

He set this forth for our own good. Only when there is a lifelong commitment of a man and woman to each other in marriage can the joy of true love be fulfilled. You are living in a relationship where there is no lasting commitment. Friends ol Public Broadcasting tor Public Broadcasting Continued from 1B 1929. Two years later Eddie headed back to his hometown of Minneapolis to rebuild.

There he joined up with Floyd, whom he had met several years earlier when Floyd was an usher at one of the Paramount theaters under his control. Ruben persuaded the owner of the Pantages Theater in Minneapolis to reopen after five years; he hired Floyd as the theater's assistant manager. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. When Ruben bought his first movie house in 1933, the Granada Theater in Sioux Falls, he installed 21-year-old Floyd as manager. Five years later, Ruben built the Hollywood Theater in Sioux Falls, and Floyd put up the Sport Bowl next door.

Floyd filled Ruben's Sioux Falls theaters with his own brand of huck-sterism: bingo games, raffles, slashed prices and even locally staged games shows. Hoping to corral the ambitions of his Sioux Falls theater manager and friend, Ruben offered Floyd one-third partnership in his growing string of theaters. Floyd signed up. During the next six years, while Floyd was buying into the theater business, he was guarding his investment by encouraging the development of drive-in theaters and keeping his eye on a new phenomenon, television. A Sioux Falls radio station, KELO-AM, had received a television license in 1950.

But the station owner, Sam Fantle hadn't put a television station on the air. In 1952, Ruben, Floyd and Bentson, Ruben's son-in-law, bought KELO-AM and the television license that came with it for $275,000. They became partners in Midcontinent Broadcasting whose sole property was the Sioux Falls radio station. Later Bentson's broadcasting holdings and the Ruben-Floyd theater holdings were folded into the expanding company. Bentson brought broadcasting expertise to the team.

His family had Horoscope By CARROLL RIGHTER GENERAL TENDENCIES: This is that day when you would be wise not to make anticipated changes or to suddenly act without much due consideration. ARIES (March 21 to April 19): You know how to persevere and be efficient in handling practical matters before lunch, but later are confused. TAURUS (April 20 to May 20): Don't change your procedure during the day since you are actually doing fine. Avoid overspending in the evening. GEMINI (May 21 to June 21) Handle those personal affairs that are important in the morning, then be more economical.

Pay pressing bills. MOON CHILDREN (June 22 to July 21): Be with allies who are congenial in the morning, and later be careful you do not make any errors. LEO (July 22 to Aug. 21): Use tact in whatever you have in mind in the morning for best results in attaining it. Don't pressure others.

VIRGO (Aug. 22 to Sept. 22) Don't be tempted to leave the old for the Brass ensemble from Hungary to open season From staff reports The Hungarian Brass of Budapest opens the Sioux Falls Community Concert Association season Monday. The ensemble, which formed 1975, features musicians from the Budapest Symphony and the Budapest Philharmonic. There are three trumpets, two trombones, a French horn and a tuba in the group.

Concert selections include a Hungarian dance composition by Johannes Brahms, a polka by Johann Strauss and a Ragtime piece by Scott Joplin. The concert starts at 8 p.m. Monday in the Sioux Falls Coliseum. A Sioux Falls Community Concerts Association membership card is needed for admission. CONFERENCE CALL jENHlNps- MA mxmr 'vmMm Ask A Doctor Dr.

Edward Zawada and a team of other physicians from the USD School of Medicine will discuss 'High Blood Pressure' and answer viewer questions. Call the phone number on the screen. Thursday, October 3 9:00 p.m. Mountain Time Ad made possible by the SD and the Corporation i.