RFD-TV is an American pay television channel owned by Rural Media Group, Inc. The channel features programming devoted to rural issues, concerns and interests. The channel's name is a reference to Rural Free Delivery, the name for the United States Postal Service's system of delivering mail directly to rural patrons. Production and uplinking facilities for RFD-TV are located at 49 Music Square West, Music Row in Nashville, Tennessee. RFD-TV's sister radio channel is Rural Radio on SiriusXM. RFD-TV formerly owned a theater in Branson, Missouri, where some variety shows that air on RFD-TV were filmed; the station also owned the Imus Ranch in Ribera, New Mexico. RFD-TV is the flagship network for Rural Media Group. Launched in December 2000, RFD-TV is the nation's first 24-hour television network featuring programming focused on the agribusiness, equine and the rural lifestyle, along with traditional country music and entertainment. As of 2017, RFD-TV operates on a full-service format. Mornings and the early part of daytime feature syndicated newsmagazines and a five-hour block of news, weather (forecasting services on the network are outsourced to The Weather Channel) and agricultural commodity market prices, in the basic format of an American cable news outlet. An additional newscast airs during the evening hours. The remainder of the daytime and evening schedule consists of horse-related magazines, coverage of rodeo and other Western sports, rural lifestyle programs, reruns of classic television programs with rural appeal, and music programs centered around country music, polka, and Southern gospel. Infomercials, which were previously publicly banned from the network, appear during the overnight hours. The network also features brokered programming in the form of its call-in program Rural America Live, and brokered televangelism from Charles Stanley, David Jeremiah and John Hagee. As of February 2015, RFD-TV is available to approximately 52 million pay television households (44.8% of households with television) in the United States. It is currently carried by satellite providers Dish Network and DirecTV and their associated streaming services (Sling TV and DirecTV Stream, respectively), as well as through cable providers such as Mediacom, Charter Communications, Cox Communications and Armstrong. In addition to its subscription coverage, RFD-TV is offered as an Internet television feed; the feed is currently paywalled and requires a paying subscription. In March 2020, RFD-TV launched a streaming app RFD-TV Now, making RFD-TV programming available on tablets, phones, and connected TVs. It was added to Sling TV on April 4, 2017, as part of the "Heartland Extra" add-on service. With an average of 136,000 viewers in 2016, RFD-TV has some of the highest viewership relative to availability compared to other "ultra-niche" networks with similar or wider distribution owned by major corporations.
History RFD-TV (Rural Free Delivery Television) was launched in 1988 by Patrick Gottsch. The channel was not picked up by any carriers. This attempt ended in bankruptcy. Another attempt was made in the 1990s, but could not get funding. Gottsch continued to look for programming. Beginning in 2000, the channel was a non-profit. RFD-TV was picked up by Dish Network in December 2000 then DirecTV in 2002. It was initially launched as a nonprofit channel, using a loophole in federal regulations to encourage the two satellite providers to pick up the channel by carrying educational and informational content, an idea originally suggested by Dish Network. The Federal Communications Commission struck down this effort in 2007 due to the channel's reliance on commercial television content. The channel was then restructured as a for-profit enterprise, for which it rented a Nashville studio and hired experienced TV executives including Ed Frazier, former Liberty Sports CEO. RFD-TV was initially conceived as effectively four channels in one space: an agriculture channel, a horse channel, a rural music and entertainment channel, and a rural lifestyle channel, relying mainly on existing programming from the syndicated market to fill its broadcast day. The acquisition of Imus in the Morning in 2007 after over a decade on MSNBC was designed to retain its satellite carriage after the FCC ruling as well as convince additional cable providers to add RFD-TV to its channel lineups. Imus left for Fox Business Network in 2009. RFD-HD, a high definition feed of RFD-TV that broadcasts in the 1080i resolution format, first began broadcasting in high definition in the fall of 2007. In mid-2009, the channel gained carriage on Cox Cable. RFD began a rural news department in late 2009 with bureaus in London and Washington, DC. Rural Media contracted with Sony Pictures Television in September 2013 to handle RFD-TV's and other properties' national ad sale. By August 2014, Rural Media Group began moving its Northstar Studio/RFD-TV staff and some of its Omaha, Nebraska staff into subleased office space at 49 Music Square West, Music Row in Nashville, Tennessee. The rest of the Omaha staff would follow in 2015 except Gottsch. In the 2016 presidential election, the Trump campaign purchased all possible advertising spots in the last two weeks before the election. By January 2017, the channel opened a bureau in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to cover Brazil's growing agriculture industry, which is heavily interconnected to the United States through companies like Brazil's JBS. A Canadian version of the channel was launched on February 1, 2020, on Shaw Direct television systems through a partnership with Rural Media.
Programming
Imus in the Morning When Don Imus returned to radio in late 2007, he had also struck a deal to simulcast Imus in the Morning on RFD-TV after moving to WABC for the rest of his career. The program was broadcast on the channel from 6 to 9 a.m. Eastern Time on weekdays, along with a primetime telecast of the program on its high definition simulcast channel RFD-HD. During much of the show's run, a news ticker was shown with the day's news, similar to that featuring when Imus in the Morning was simulcast on MSNBC. The video simulcast of the program ended its run on RFD-TV on August 28, 2009, and moved to Fox Business Network several weeks later. After Imus's retirement, RFD-TV owner Patrick Gottsch purchased Imus's 3,000-acre ranch.
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