Radio: Prairie Radio

A man at an Indian agency hugged his radio last week for news from St. Mary’s Hospital in Pierre, S. Dak., and learned that he was a father. Though prairie schooners no longer cross that formidable State, it is still for many miles as empty and lonely as the sea, and as barren of telephone poles. The man at the Indian agency was receiving a kind of shore-to-ship communication on which 5,000 ranch families depend.

Broadcaster of such news, and the first in the whole West to put it regularly on the air, was Mrs. Ida McNeil of Pierre’s Station KGFX. Mrs. McNeil runs the only transmitter (200 watts) within a 200-mile radius of Pierre, the State capital. Her husband, Danna, a railroader on the Chicago & North Western, started it for fun in 1916. Ida took over in 1922, used the station to send out weather reports for stockmen and to let Danna know about the children when he made his run to Rapid City. She read her first hospital list in 1923, has been doing it three times a day ever since.

As official weather reporter for Pierre and vicinity, Mrs. McNeil in her little white cottage (KGFX is just off the living room) gives out some of the fiercest temperature figures recorded in the U.S. From the Badlands to the eastern lakes a winter cold spell may mean 46° below, an August afternoon 115° above. Even on days like that, when a lot of people in South Dakota are feeling poorly, brisk Mrs. McNeil puts in her eight ‘hours at the microphone.

KGFX became a commercial station in 1932, now has an annual income of $7,000. Mr. McNeil died in 1936. Mrs. McNeil occasionally acts as M.C. for local amateur talent, puts on regular talks by State officials, spins her own newscasts. She also writes and reads advertising scripts for local stores. Admirers think she can make a dress sale on Pierre’s Main Street sound like a Schiaparelli opening.

This is not the first service to her State that Ida McNeil has performed. When she was a girl, in 1909, she designed the State flag. Now 53, she says of her career: “They tell me I’ve talked the longest on one station of anyone in the State.”