NEWELL—The quaint little town of Newell, SD with its population of a little under 600 was picked to be part of the South Dakota Public Broadcasting program called Dakota Life. The program highlights individual towns in each episode.
The PBS team came to the Newell City Hall on April 16 to host a Community Conversation with the citizens of the town. The meetings were held in two sessions. The first session began at 2:00 p.m. and ran until 4:00 p.m. and the second session ran from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Jaxon Thorson, Producer, explained that the team looks at the map of South Dakota and decides what little towns would be fun to cover. Newell was the third stop on the West River side of South Dakota with White River and Edgemont being the other two. The team will travel to have conversations with four East River towns in the coming months.
Those in the community that showed up to have the conversations about their town were given a prompt sheet of things to talk about to help get ideas flowing. “These are just prompts to kind of get you thinking about your town, and maybe, if you have a fun story to share you can use the prompts. And then on our other show, South Dakota Focus, that’s a more serious show, and their topic next year is on care, so these are some prompts for that particular show,” said Brittany Neiles, Community Coordinator.
There were two programs acquiring information for possible inclusion in future episodes: South Dakota Focus and Dakota Life. South Dakota Focus is in its 31st season and focuses on complex issues unfolding in South Dakota communities. Sherry Hocking, Newell Ambulance Director, spoke about the issue of health care in Newell and the importance of the Ambulance service to the entire area. She explained that Newell Ambulance service is all volunteer workers. Tim Davison, SDPB Host and Producer said that would be a perfect issue to be discussed on South Dakota Focus and would refer it as such.
Davison explained that his Dakota Life programming he likes to keep the topics light. After learning about the town turkeys Davison said, “That sounds like a fun story! See, we like the fun stuff on our team, our journalist (SD Focus) likes the hard stories, you know, the real stuff. We like ghosts and turkeys!”
One of the prompts was: Is there a haunted house or building? to which many in the conversation agreed and shared stories of the Newell Grocery Store and the ghost that lives there and plays tricks on everyone.
Other topics of discussion consisted of the big Labor Day Celebration and all of the events that make up that occasion including the rodeo, parade, mud volleyball, tractor pull and sheep tee peeing; the Splash Pad and surrounding people that it will draw to the area if or when it gets complete; the irrigation system that is in place to carry water all over the area; the Sheep yards; the Ram Sale; the Festival of Trees; and the designation of being a Cardiac Ready Community.
Ken Wetz, community member, said “Labor Day weekend is pretty big deal here. I would say 3,000 people come, I have been announcing the parade for 30 some years and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crowd there less than 1,000, it brings a lot of people to town.”
After the producers are finished with all of the Community Conversations they start planning when to come back to the area to begin filming. “We definitely want to be here for the Labor Day Celebration,” said Davison.
The process of planning, shooting and then editing and preparing the show takes up to a year. One of the unique parts of the process is that after the show is ready to air, but before it actually airs, the SDPB team will come back to Newell for the Premiere. They invite the town to come watch the Newell episode and serve snacks and drinks. Davison shared, “It is my favorite part, watching the show with everyone. After it’s over I always ask everyone to raise their hand if they saw themselves on the screen!”
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