A Real Community Station

A television station here ?

Yes, KXGN-5, in the tiniest of the nation’s 213 TV markets, enduring in a once-thriving, now-wilting town of 6,500 in eastern Montana.

“It’s getting harder and harder,” said general manager/sales manager/sportscaster/commercial voice/TV bingo host Dan Frenzel, known in these parts as Dapper Dan.

How small is KXGN?

--So small that it’s a CBS affiliate that also airs NBC programs.

--So small that its total staff numbers only eight.

--So small that when 23-year-old Terry Kegley calls a meeting of his full-time “Action 5 News” staff--news director, anchor, reporter and cameraperson--he’s the only one in the room.

--So small that KXGN hears about its ratings only in “bits and pieces” from national sales reps. That’s because it doesn’t subscribe to a ratings service, even though its audience is included in the February, May, July and November ratings “books” distributed to paying clients by ARB and the A. C. Nielsen Co.

“The cost to subscribe is $12,000,” Frenzel said, “and we don’t have it.”

--So small that its only concession to ratings sweeps months is to advertise more on radio, with CBS and NBC sharing the cost. “And we also tell our engineer to replace all the tubes, because we don’t want to go off the air,” Frenzel said.

--So small that the average cost of a 30-second spot in prime time on KXGN is a mere $15.

Local ads aren’t enough to sustain the station. “We were surviving on national spot sales, but that’s gone down 200%-300% since Black Monday, costing us 20 grand a month,” Frenzel said.

Former disc jockey Dapper Dan has spent 23 of his 42 years at either KXGN or its companion radio station here, both owned by elderly Lewis W. Moore, who now resides most of the time in Palm Desert, Calif.

Frenzel saw the TV station’s boom years, from 1976 to 1982, and is now seeing the bum years, in an area where people regard television as perhaps their closest companion. There isn’t much else to do here, particularly if you’re snowbound or hiding indoors from the awesome winter cold.

KXGN’s signal extends 140 miles, reaching such hamlets as Ekalaka, Plevna, Ollie, Willard and Mildred, some with as few as 50 inhabitants.

“When we’re in those towns, they treat us like Dan Rather,” Frenzel said. “They can still get him on satellite, but we’re their only local news.”

KXGN’s electronic heart is Glendive, though, a town some say is named after a man named Glen who owned a dive.

“It’s a blessing to have a television station in a community this size,” said Karen Straus, the sophisticated managing editor of the town’s biweekly Ranger-Review newspaper and a transplanted Southern Californian. “It gives us something other small communities don’t have.”

You can reach Glendive by car or bus from Billings, the state’s largest city. Or if you’re adventurous, you can hop a 10-seater--you’re asked your weight before you get on--and fly a bumpy 65 minutes with Big Sky Airlines, which the locals have nicknamed “Big Scare.”

Glendive is more than just a friendly place. It’s also the home of Dawson Community College, and it’s a trendsetter. Where else--eat your heart out, L.A.--would you find a beauty salon/self-service gas station?

What are the TV tastes of eastern Montana? “They don’t like sex on TV out here,” said Frenzel, a native of nearby Dickinson. “They want country shows. ‘Hee Haw’ does very well for us.”

KXGN and Glendive could use some hee haws.

The TV station was started in 1958 by Moore, a decade after he had founded the radio station. For a long time, his broadcast properties prospered; then they started to skid about 1983 when faced with the growth of cable and the decline of Montana’s and Glendive’s economy.

“This used to be a railroad and oil town,” Frenzel said. “But the railroad (Burlington Northern) stopped coming through here and the oil boom stopped three years ago.”

That, along with a farming recession and corporate pullouts from the Glendive area, led to a devastating 33% population plunge (from more than 10,000) and the death of many small businesses.

The impact on KXGN has been disastrous.

Frenzel estimates that KXGN’s audience has shrunk to 15,000 households from a peak of 22,000 because of the declining population and increased competition.

Satellite dishes now dot Montana’s rural landscape almost as much as farm buildings. The VCR revolution has hit Glendive, too, with videos now available at three locations. And ironically, KXGN is side-by-side on South Douglas Street with Glendive Cable TV. The enemy.

The cable firm’s 26-channel offering includes KXGN, but also NBC affiliates in Salt Lake City and nearby Williston, N.D, which compete with KXGN.

Backed against the wall, Frenzel got permission from CBS to begin its prime-time schedule an hour early on KXGN. So now the CBS schedule runs from 6 to 9 p.m., followed by NBC programming from 9 to 10 p.m.. “CBS didn’t want to do it, but they understood my position.”

Desperate.

“I’m banging my head against the wall trying to survive,” Frenzel said.

In many ways, confronting KXGN is like confronting TV’s past. Its style, tone and execution evoke memories of 35 years ago, when TV was at its most intimate and simplest.

In its own way, the station is doing what it was always meant to do--connect to Glendive and the surrounding area. That’s no easy job on a shoestring:

--KXGN will resume its Sunday night public-affairs half-hour, “Let’s Talk About It,” when the host returns from pregnancy leave.

--Frenzel hosts “Blackout Bingo” live at 2:30 p.m. weekdays, a half-hour promotion for two grocery stores and a bank, where viewers can pick up cards and play along for up to $100 (“Again, that cash prize today. . . .”).

--”At the Rose” is KXGN’s version of “Siskel and Ebert,” in which a pair of local “critics” review the week’s flick at Rose Theatre, Glendive’s struggling movie house. It’s sponsored by Rose Theatre, which is owned by KXGN owner Moore and is run by his son, so the reviews usually accent the positive.

Opening this week was “Cinderella,” reviewed by Ranger-Review editor Straus and Roberta Patterson, a teacher at Dawson Community College. Patterson on the movie: “What a delightful way to get out of the cold.”

--A first-class play-by-play man who announces local high school and college games on radio, Frenzel is also a twice-weekly sportscaster on “Action 5 News” in a segment sponsored by two businesses. “I went out and sold the spot and they wanted Dapper Dan to do it,” he said.

Then there’s news. After running “NBC Nightly News” and “The CBS Evening News” back to back from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. (seeing Dan Rather follow Tom Brokaw on the same station is a jolt), KXGN presents its half-hour “Action 5 News” at 5:30 p.m., and again at 10 p.m.

The station’s early news is most popular in winter, the late news in summer, when farmers work longer into the night.

Actually, KXGN fills only about 8 minutes of “Action 5 News”; the rest is supplied by a regional network in Billings.

It was Kegley who gave his newscast its glitzy new name several months ago. Asked why, he grinned. “I don’t know,” he said. “It just sounded . . . better.”

Kegley and his newscast don’t match the high-tech title. The biggest stories are often local sports or weather; the station hasn’t been able to afford a wire service for three years.

Kegley--who was KXGN’s production assistant less than two years ago--is replaced as anchor by present production assistant Mary Lee Ames on occasions when he is out on a story and unable to return.

Otherwise, he’s the local newscast--shooting in the field with one of two KXGN cameras that, according to Frenzel, are “a step up” from the home movie variety.

Kegley edits his own tape and writes his own copy, which he reads--there is no TelePrompTer--in a strong voice while making eye contact with the camera.

Oh, yes--the studio camera. There is only one in operation during a newscast--the small, inexpensive kind, and behind that camera is . . . no one. The camera is preset on the balding, round-faced young anchor, who wears no makeup. “Oh, yeah, I ran out,” he said. “I have to get another one of those--what do you call em’?--compact things.”

Even an anchor with no “compact thing” is a star in eastern Montana. “They stare at you, and they whisper, ‘That’s him,’ ” Kegley said.

But there’s also a downside. Only in a small town would an anchor find himself reporting negatively about people and then feel their wrath because he knows them personally. Only in a small town could Kegley report about local drug busts, knowing that two technicians angrily watching him from the control room (but no longer employed at the station) were among the bustees.

Dapper Dan Frenzel has faced a bigger challenge than the one he faces now, having made an amazing recovery from malignant testicular cancer several years ago. But the future seems blurry for another reason.

“I think that somebody will probably buy this station, eliminate jobs, start fresh, and I will be the first to go,” he said. “I worry a lot about my future, because I don’t have any security.”

He is more optimistic about the town’s prospects. Positive-thinking Don Kettner, president of Dawson Community College and a member of a group called Glendive Forward, believes that the local media are helping the town turn the corner.

“They are so darned important to us,” he said. “The station is the only visual contact with the community we have.”

Meanwhile, it was 18 degrees below zero in the nation’s smallest market the other evening--a great night to watch television.