\n<\/p>\n
A tractor-pulling contest in Rockwell, Iowa. \u201cThe Big Joe Polka Show.\u201d A veterinarian discussing how to keep flies off cows. A rerun of a 1982 episode of \u201cHee Haw.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those were some of the recent offerings on RFD-TV, a 24-hour channel created by Patrick Gottsch, a satellite-dish installer who had the idea to start a network aimed at the farmers and ranchers who were his customers.<\/p>\n
Its programing may not be the stuff of must-see television in urban and suburban America. But RFD-TV, which also carries gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Future Farmers of America convention, occupies an enduring, if narrow, niche on the television spectrum.<\/p>\n
Mr. Gottsch, whose spinoff properties include the Cowboy Channel, the Cowgirl Channel and Rural Radio, Channel 147 on SiriusXM, died on May 18 in Fort Worth. He was 70.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
His death, at a hotel in the city\u2019s historic Stockyards district, was unexpected. His daughters Raquel Gottsch Koehler and Gatsby Gottsch Solheim said that the family was awaiting a medical examiner\u2019s report to learn the cause, but that it was probably related to his history of diabetes.<\/p>\n
Mr. Gottsch, who grew up on a farm in Nebraska, fought tenaciously to prove that TV programming about agriculture, horses, the rural lifestyle and traditional country music could be viable \u2014 especially in his company\u2019s early years, when, he liked to recall, investors and media executives told him that it was a \u201cstupid idea\u201d or that \u201cfarmers don\u2019t watch TV.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cPatrick always came back to this refrain: I don\u2019t think these media executives look out their plane windows when they\u2019re flying from coast to coast,\u201d Mrs. Solheim said in an interview. \u201cHe really was passionate about serving the people who grew up like he did in rural America.\u201d<\/p>\n
His death prompted testaments to his impact from stars of country music, rodeo and Western-themed entertainment, including Dolly Parton and the creators of the television drama \u201cYellowstone.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cWhile \u2018Yellowstone\u2019 receives much praise for bringing rural America into the public zeitgeist, \u2018Yellowstone\u2019 stands on the shoulders of Patrick\u2019s creation,\u201d Taylor Sheridan, a creator of the series, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
In the 1990s, Mr. Gottsch was a single father who couldn\u2019t afford a babysitter, so he would pick up his daughters after school and bring them along as he installed satellite dishes.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019d climb up to the roof, and we\u2019d be in the living room calling out the signal strength,\u201d Mrs. Solheim recalled.<\/p>\n
Mr. Gottsch first tried to get RFD-TV \u2014 he named it for the Post Office\u2019s Rural Free Delivery service \u2014 off the ground in 1988. That attempt ended a year later in bankruptcy, because no cable service would carry it. He returned to installing satellite receivers.<\/p>\n
But a founder of the Dish Network, Charlie Ergen, suggested that he reboot the channel as a nonprofit to take advantage of a federal law requiring satellite companies to reserve bandwidth for educational programming. The Dish Network promised him one channel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
RFD-TV was reborn in 2000, originally with almost all its programming created by third-party producers. Two years later, it expanded to DirecTV; by 2007, Mr. Gottsch had converted the operation into a for-profit company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
That year, he signed the cowboy-hatted talk radio personality Don Imus to simulcast his show on RFD-TV, after Mr. Imus was booted from MSNBC for a racist comment. The Imus deal persuaded Comcast, a cable behemoth, to pick up RFD-TV, introducing many perplexed but curious urban viewers to its live reports on commodity prices and rural weather, shows like \u201cCattlemen to Cattlemen,\u201d and broadcasts of the Rose Parade in which hosts named every Budweiser Clydesdale pulling the beer wagon.<\/p>\n