SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — The man who brought cable television to audiences in South Dakota and surrounding states has died.
Joe H. Floyd, whose impact on the industry is still felt today, died on Tuesday according to family members. He was 88-years-old. Floyd was the son of KELO-TV’s founder Joe L. Floyd. Details on services remembering Floyd have not yet been announced.
Floyd cut his broadcasting teeth as a teenager, working at KELOLAND TV, making sure news stories made it on-air, back in the days when everything was shot on film.
“I’d take that film and go downstairs, drive it over to the back of Harold’s Photography Shop, take it downstairs and they would develop it,” Floyd said in 2023.
Then it was a matter of delivering the developed film back to the station where crews would splice in the commercial breaks.
“When they finished doing that then it was a master reel, I’d take it back downstairs, put it in the car and drive to Shindler because that’s where our projection equipment was at the time,” Floyd said.
Such was the roundabout, yet necessary, approach to getting pictures on the air back in the early days of television. And Floyd enjoyed every minute of it.
“My dad saw television as a stage show in your living room. He had a totally different view of what TV was all about. Instead of playing to an audience, it was actually about having the audience come into your stage,” Floyd said in 2019.
Floyd climbed the corporate ladder to become the president and COO of Midcontinent Media, KELO-TV’s then-parent company, and oversaw the acquisition of cable systems throughout the Midwest. In retirement, Floyd tended to his massive collection of classic Ford vehicles which he kept inside his shop in Harrisburg.
“I was just one of those kids, who grew up in the 50s, we all had Fords, we used to race down Main Street at night to see what you could possibly do,” Floyd said in 2019.
Floyd is a member of the South Dakota Broadcasting Hall of Fame and is remembered as being the architect of one of the most advanced broadband systems in the country. And viewers of KELOLAND have benefited from his pioneering spirit of bringing news and entertainment into living rooms year after year.
“We can all stand back (and) be proud of how KELO has maintained its reputation and grown with the industry,” Floyd said. “You can look back and say we did a pretty good job.”
