SDPB UNDERWRITER SPOTLIGHT
SDN COMMUNICATIONS
Vernon Brown, VP of Marketing & Communications “SDN is blessed to be a South Dakota company that has a message and a story to tell. South Dakota Public Broadcasting is so FOCUSed on South Dakota, that it’s just a natural match for us. SDN is a South Dakota home-grown company. We’ve been around for about three decades. We were started by the independent telephone companies – cooperatives, municipal, tribal, and family-owned telephone companies – to join their networks together to provide long distance choice to their customers. That was 30 years ago, but today that 50,000-mile fiber optic network is really about connecting people and businesses to the internet. That’s what we do today throughout every corner of South Dakota and much of the southern third of Minnesota. Not only are we able to tell SDN’s story and what we do on
SDPB’s underwriting, but the listeners and viewers thank us for supporting that effort, for supporting SDPB. It speaks to our audience: technical and IT people, top decision makers in South Dakota. We’ve found, in my almost 20 years with SDN, that SDPB is a great platform for us to tell a story and support something that we think is very important to South Dakota. Now, the first voice I wake up to in the morning is that of Cara Hetland on my Smart Speaker. SDN has invested in that messaging. I hear Cara Hetland in the morning talk about SDN communications before I get my news for the day. That platform gives us very hard numbers about how many people use that platform to get their South Dakota Public Broadcasting. On the softer side, whether it’s Images of the Past or the technology beat that we support, those are all great things to invest in South Dakota’s culture, invest in
South Dakota’s education. We’re just very proud to be part of that. It’s also just a cultural thing at SDN. Whether it’s Mark Shlanta, our CEO or myself – we’ve been involved in several public broadcasting boards and committees. Through that, we’ve had an inside view of how impactful SDPB’s content is to South Dakotans and that has made us want to be in those platforms. Ultimately, the content of SDPB is what drives us to want to be present on multiple SDPB platforms. The content is so rich. It’s important for us to be there.” SDN generously supports SDPB’s technology programming and Images of the Past The Middle of Everywhere, a new documentary premiering this fall on SDPB.
SDPB: LOCAL CONTENT, STATEWIDE COVERAGE SDPB reaches over 200,000 households monthly.2 Our viewers are the most educated, influential and community-minded audience in South Dakota. SDPB’s Emmy-nominated local TV productions showcase South Dakota newsmakers, lawmakers, athletes and artists to create a personal connection with viewers from remote ranchlands to bustling city centers. SDPB Radio is South Dakota’s source for NPR and more than 30 hours of local news, issues, and arts programming. SDPB provides statewide coverage – across I-90 and up and down I-29 and everywhere in between – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. SDPB is South Dakota. Sources: 1. PBS Sponsorship Study: Audience Attributes and Behaviors, City Square Associates, March 2015; 2. Neilsen, P+, 28-day cume.
Liz Larkin | (605) 677-5861| Liz.Larkin@sdpb.org June 2020
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