It has been 50 years since WDAZ-TV began broadcasting from Grand Forks, and through those five decades, current and former employees say the station's identity has been defined by its local focus.
"We were, and still are, the Grand Forks television station. People have told me many times that they're not really interested in Fargo news," said former station manager Rob Horken. "They want to know what's going on here."
This month, WDAZ celebrates five decades of milestones and memories, from televised UND sports to the flood of 1997 to winning an Emmy Award.
Those who have worked at the station over the years say WDAZ's defining characteristic was a tight focus on local news.
"They told the story about the people in the Red River Valley," said Kevin Dean, a news anchor from 1987 to 1996. "Whether it was some farmer or person that had an unusual hobby."
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"What defined the station was that we had our own news department here," said Horken, who was the station's manager and gave on-camera fishing reports in the character of Ernie the Angler.
Dean said he liked that WDAZ wasn't a revolving door for reporters. Several longtime reporters had a familiarity with the Grand Forks community that gave them an attachment to the stories they reported.
"(The reporters) would really care about these stories," he said. "We're residents here, too, who are impacted by taxes or impacted by conflict that may happen. ... We're impacted by all of these things that are in the news."
Dean also liked the station's ability to follow stories for sometimes months or even years.
"You'd check back on these people," he said. "You'd see how developments were coming along. ... You'd kind of follow that dream along with them."
Mileposts
The TV station's local focus also made some of Grand Forks' most dramatic moments part of WDAZ's history.
During the 1997 flood, the station never went off the air during the disaster and worked out of trailers outside its building.
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Longtime sports anchor Pat Sweeney remembers stopping sportscasts starting April 18, 1997, so the sports reporters could help with the news instead.
"That was the first time I had done news in 15 years," he said. "I just felt so rusty."
Former anchor and producer Milo Smith had been at the station almost exactly a year at the time of the flood. He started at WDAZ on April 21, 1996.
"I often joke that the most important moment of my career happened when I was 29 years old," he said. "That was probably the pinnacle of having something huge happen in your local TV market."
WDAZ's coverage of the abduction of Dru Sjodin on Nov. 22, 2003, was also an important event the station's history.
"It was so ongoing because there was a search," Horken said of the coverage. "Entire communities were involved."
The station was recognized with an Emmy Award for its coverage of another community search in August 2013, when 11-year-old Anthony Kuznia wandered from his home and drowned in the Red River.
"It's a terrible ending, but the fact of everyone coming together was really powerful," current anchor Stacie Van Dyke said.
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Not all the memories were tied to tragic events. Dean recalled the challenge of moving the station's operations from downtown to its current building on South Washington Street in 1994.
"That was a phenomenal thing, to physically move a television station to a different location," Dean said. "Our mantra was 'the news never stops.' ... We had to do this in stages whereby all of these things kept going."
Small at heart
Sweeney, who started at WDAZ as a weekend sports anchor in 1982 and was its sports director until he left the station in 2014, said WDAZ did things with sports coverage that stations in larger markets weren't doing, such as the UND basketball coaches show that started in 1989, which featured the coach of the women's team as well as the men's basketball coach.
"I don't know how many other stations in the country were doing coaches shows that featured a women's basketball coach at the time," Sweeney said. "I always considered DAZ the little station that could, especially in sports coverage."
He also considered it "a great compliment" when the NHL Network or ESPNU picked up WDAZ's live game feeds.
But WDAZ has not strayed its local emphasis.
"(WDAZ) is hyperlocal in a way that nobody else can touch," said Van Dyke, who has worked at the station for more than five years. "We're proud of that and I think the community is proud of that. ... I like that we put out a product that people can kind of rally around."
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Smith said that emphasis defines the station.
"WDAZ is really just quintessential small-market television," he said Smith. "They're just so much more important to the community, I think, than in a bigger city."
