Television in Gillette

Obviously, there is no television news station in Gillette.

There are ABC and NBC affiliates in Casper. I've only seen the NBC affiliate's truck in Gillette once or twice.

Even though it's the state capital, Cheyenne has only one station, a CBS affiliate that covers Cheyenne, Wyo.-Scottsbluff, Neb. market. The Casper stations do a better job doing statewide journalism than the Cheyenne station.

I honestly could not have identified any Wyoming stations had I not looked them up on the web for this blog post.

Ditto, probably, with my editors.

The station numbers are weird, too, like Channel 19.

The Denver affiliates have all the good numbers -- 2, 4, 5, etc. I don't usually watch Denver news because it's meaningless to me that their state Legislature is debating a measure that would do X for public school students.

There are lots of Menards commercials -- "Save big money at Menards" -- on Wyoming television, which surprised me. I didn't know Mendards still existed. But they still do! With stores in Rapid and Casper. They are advertisers with the newspaper, too, so I should probably check them out some day. Now more than ever, I pay attention to the advertisers and try to patronize them.

If I am going to watch television news, I watch KOTA, Kota Territory News. Based in Rapid City, it covers the western halves of South Dakota, North Dakota, northwestern Wyoming and a tiny bit Montana. It's a pretty ambitious area, probably more than 1,000 miles. But I'm actually rather impressed. A few times I've seen KOTA news trucks in Gillette for breaking news. Most of the stories outside of the Rapid/Black Hills area are features -- lots of stuff on agriculture. But it rather lifts my spirits that some media outlets aren't necessarily drinking the "hyperlocal" Kool Aid.

There is a Billings, Mont., station, too. I haven't ever seen it.