A tractor pulling contest in Rockwell, Iowa. “The Big Joe Polka Show.” Veterinarians discussing how to keep flies away from cows. A rerun of a 1982 episode of “Hee Haw.”
These are some of the shows recently offered on RFD-TV, a 24-hour channel founded by satellite dish installer Patrick Gotch, who came up with the idea to start a network aimed at his farmer and rancher clients.
Its programming may not be must-watch in urban or suburban America, but RFD-TV, which broadcasts the Future Farmers of America convention from proceedings to proceedings, has a small but enduring presence in the television world.
Gotch, whose spinoff shows included the Cowboy Channel, the Cowgirl Channel and SiriusXM Channel 147, Rural Radio, died May 18 in Fort Worth. He was 70 years old.
His death was unexpected at a hotel in the city's historic Stockyards district, and his daughters, Raquel Gottsch Koehler and Gatsby Gottsch Solheim, said the family is waiting for the coroner's report to learn the cause of death, but that it was likely related to his history of diabetes.
Gotch, who grew up on a Nebraska farm, fought doggedly to prove that a TV show about agriculture, horses, country living and traditional country music could be successful, and he often recalls investors and media executives telling him it was a stupid idea and that farmers don't watch TV, especially in the early days of the company.
“Patrick always said, 'I don't think media executives look out the window when they're flying from coast to coast,'” Mrs. Solheim said in an interview. “He was really committed to serving people who, like him, grew up in rural America.”
His death prompted stars of country music, rodeo and westerns to testify to his impact, including Dolly Parton and the creators of the TV show “Yellowstone.”
“Yellowstone is much praised for bringing rural American life into the public zeitgeist, and it is built on Patrick's creation,” series creator Taylor Sheridan said in a statement.
In the 1990s, Gotch was a single father who couldn't afford a babysitter, so he would pick up his daughters after school and accompany them to install satellite dishes.
“He got on the roof and we were in the living room yelling about the signal strength,” Mrs. Solheim recalled.
Gotch's first attempt to launch RFD-TV (named after the postal service's free rural delivery service) in 1988 ended in bankruptcy a year later when cable companies wouldn't carry the signal. He went back to installing satellite receivers.
But Dish Network founder Charlie Ergen offered to relaunch the channel as a nonprofit to take advantage of a federal law that requires satellite companies to set aside bandwidth for educational programming, and Dish promised him one channel.
RFD-TV was reborn in 2000, initially with almost all of its programming produced by third-party producers, expanded into DirecTV two years later, and by 2007 Gotch had turned RFD-TV into a for-profit company.
That year, he signed cowboy-hatted radio personality Don Imus to simulcast his show on RFD-TV after Imus had been booted from MSNBC for making racist remarks. The Imus deal convinced cable giant Comcast to hand over the RFD-TV rights, introducing many bemused but curious urban viewers to live reports on commodity prices and local weather, shows like “Cattlemen to Cattlemen,” and a broadcast of the Rose Parade in which the host names every Budweiser Clydesdale pulling a beer wagon.
“With its cowboy hosts and jargon, this channel offers no insight to narrow-minded urbanites,” wrote New York Times Magazine columnist Virginia Heffernan with admiration. “Seriously, urbanites should feel as privileged to tune into RFD-TV as they are to a freshman attending an advanced seminar.”
Imus moved to Fox Business Network before his contract with RFD-TV ended. But Gotch, who was on the cusp of making it big with a 50-person broadcast studio in Nashville and a private jet, bought Imus' 3,400-acre ranch in New Mexico. He also bought stuffed specimens of Roy Rogers' horse Trigger and his dog Bullet at an auction. He put them on display at the John Wayne Museum, which he founded with Wayne's son Ethan in Fort Worth.
In 2017, Gotch launched the Cowboy Channel, becoming the official television home of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. By broadcasting hundreds of live rodeo performances, Gotch has significantly increased viewership for the sport, attracted new sponsors and increased pay for cowboys. Former Cowboy Channel announcer Jeff Medders referred to Gotch as the “Rodeo Elvis” due to his immense popularity among sports fans.
Gotch, whose daughters are both executives at the company, said RFD-TV is available in about 25 million homes and the Cowboy Channel in about 14 million.
Still, viewership is relatively small: According to media research firm ComScore, RFD-TV was watched by an average of 9,915 households over the last four weeks, compared with 4,850 for the Cowboys Channel. (By comparison, Headline News averaged 101,000 and the Golf Channel 85,000.)
Patrick Gene Gotch was born in Omaha on June 3, 1953, to Bernard and Gloria (Borowiak) Gotch. His father was a full-time farmer and his mother ran the household. He was the oldest of five children growing up on the family farm in Elkhorn, Nebraska, which produced corn, soybeans and cattle.
Patrick attended Sam Houston State University in Texas on a baseball scholarship, but dropped out after one year due to a broken hand. In 1977, he moved to Chicago and worked as a commodities broker at the Chicago Board of Trade.
He soon returned to Nebraska, where customers who had installed satellite dishes there asked him why they were happy to have ESPN and the Disney Channel but didn't have any programming about life on the farm.
Gotch's marriage to Shirley Hickey ended in divorce in 1991. Gotch moved with his two daughters (of which he had custody) to Fort Worth and became sales manager for a livestock auction house, but soon left to re-enter the satellite dish business and pursue his RFD-TV dreams. Gotch then returned to Nebraska and purchased part of the family's original farm.
In 2017, he married Angie Good and had a third daughter, Rose. He is survived by his daughters and his wife, his brother Mickey, three sisters Teri Murphy, Tammy Hill and Toni Korpela, and four grandchildren.
Gotch founded the Cowgirl Channel in 2023 after her youngest daughter, while watching a rodeo, asked why barrel racers and other female rodeo performers weren't given equal representation on television.
At the launch of the Cowgirl Channel outside the company's studios in the Fort Worth Stockyards, Mr. Groch's older daughters were hesitant when asked if they wanted to speak out, but Rose Groch, who was 9 years old at the time, spoke out.
“The girls are the best. The boys drool,” she said.