UPDATE II: As I suspected this was not a paid for commercial. Not once in the two hour event in which the mayor talked a lot about the city did he say it was paid for by his campaign. This means his 2 opponents can and should ask for free and equal time.

UPDATE: It looks like there is a little rule that needs to be followed here;

The equal-time rule specifies that American radio and television broadcast stations must provide an equivalent opportunity to any opposing political candidates who request it. This means, for example, that if a station gives a given amount of time to a candidate in prime time, it must do the same for another candidate who requests it, at the same price if applicable.

I suggest other candidates ask the station for equal time.

I also see now the State of the City Address is being billed as an RSVP event;

Join Mayor Paul TenHaken for the 2022 State of the City Address. The event also will feature a panel discussion with youth leaders from the 2021-22 Mayor’s Youth Council on the future of our community.

Advance registration is required; seating is limited.

8-9 a.m. Wednesday, March 16

Doors open at 7:30 a.m. Breakfast is included with registration.

Event is free and open to the public. RSVP by March 4, 2022.

Seating is limited and on a first-come, first-served basis. The address is also available to view via livestream on the City of Sioux Falls’ Facebook page.

I have NEVER heard of a public event like a public meeting being a RSVP event, especially in a facility owned by taxpayers (Convention Center). I am also curious who is paying for the breakfast? The tickets appear to be FREE. This looks like a campaign event funded by the taxpayers. Unbelievable!

Section 3.03  Mayor’s duties and responsibility.  

The mayor shall, at the beginning of each calendar year, and may at other times give the council information as to the affairs of the city and recommend measures considered necessary and desirable. The mayor shall preside at meetings of the council, represent the city in intergovernmental relationships, appoint with the advice and consent of the council the members of the citizen advisory boards and commissions, present an annual state of the city message, and perform other duties specified by the council and by article III. The mayor shall be recognized as head of the city government for all ceremonial purposes and by the governor for purposes of military law.

Imagine me NOT being surprised when the morning host on 1320 AM, Belfrage, announces this morning that on Thursday between 7-9 AM, Mayor Poops will be able to have a 2-Hour campaign commercial on the station.

I will have to give the mayor’s campaign folks props, who wouldn’t want what appears to be a FREE 2-hour commercial?

But what is surprising is a station that constantly bitches about the supposed ‘state media’ they just turned into the propaganda wing for city hall. Maybe they will give Poops more awards during the show.

By l3wis

36 thoughts on “UPDATE II: KELO AM turns into the ‘State Media’ for Mayor TenHaken on Thursday”
  1. belfrige apologizes for trump leading an attempted coup.
    belfridge apologizes for the arrested insurrectionists of 1.6.21. Why should we be surprised by this?

  2. It’s propaganda radio when hours of broadcast are free for an incumbent mayor. Promoting the dictator for Strong Arm Charter violates media ethics. This is an FCC violation worthy of an EOY license renewal 6 figure fine.

  3. Belfrage is such a shill. The only consolation is he has the same group of six listeners every day.

    In all fairness, I am eager to learn the dates when Taneeza and David Z get to guest host. I wonder if the Z-man will bring his Power Points?

  4. So the Mayor’s campaign paid for a two hour time slot each morning, this is not news, that is advertising for yourself to get the word out to others to promote your ideals. The other candidates, myself included, may do the same. “WE” all can. I would not think the mayors campaign has not done anything wrong here. Cause all “Citizens” have the right to run for office, advertise themselves, and get their name out there. Considering the fact that you choose to ‘pay’ for the time. I am not sure if calling this “State Sponsored Media” so much as its just a concerned citizen wishing to promote his/her campaign for public office. State Media would be a form of ‘state sponsored’ media, paid for, and supported by the government itself. I do not believe the Mayor is using any City tax dollars in doing this, nor is the City sponsoring the mayors campaign, nor supporting the mayors campaign. Now you may be allowed to ‘make claims of such’, but you would have to bring proof of the facts to support such claims. Be careful man….cause if you make these claims, the mayor or any candidate for that matter also has the right to counter sue for libel, slander, misrepresentation of the facts, which could be seen as damaging their reputation .

  5. Say NTNLIQ, have you guys decided where Paul plans to hold his victory party, yet?

  6. I stopped listening to Belfrage when he went in the tank for MMM.
    I simply could not take the constant slobbering by Belfrage during the regular on-air visits with Huether. It was like nails on a chalk board to me.

    Not a single challenge to MMM relative to his abysmal record of government transparency, nor to the poor decisions made during his administration.

    Any question which may have been remotely close to exposing MMM were phrased in the format of ‘asked and answered’. Belfrage followed quickly the question with a rationalization, leaving MMM simply to nod and affirm the rationalization which Belfrage had provided in company with his question. “Well, that’s absolutely correct, Greg …”

    Belfrage isn’t the easiest nor most friendly ‘interview’ in town, tho. That would be Jodi Schwan (but at least she discloses when she is being paid to be friendly and easy).

  7. Mike, put down the kool-aid for a moment. If PTH paid for it, he would need say that per law. I doubt he paid for it, because Belfrage never said a peep that it was paid for by either the campaign or the city. But we are paying him to be mayor not an amateur DJ. I see an ethics complaint coming on.

  8. Mike, you also don’t understand the meaning of slander. The way I look at it I am giving KELO and Paul a warning in advance not to do something stupid, but I won’t hold my breath.

  9. Couple things: it’s “too”, for God’s sake. Not my man Mike was on Belfrage every month. Were you screaming ethics violation then too? Or just hoping you can come up with something that sticks on TenHaken?

  10. As the sitting mayor he can do as many interviews as he wants to in the form of a PSA but once he became an announced candidate he has to follow campaign rules. I don’t care if he is going on there talking about gravy and teddy bears for 2 hours, he is NOW a candidate and there are certain rules that need to be followed. But you are right, he seems to be teflon because he continues to flaunt breaking the rules and doesn’t care. He learned this when he was assisting politicians in the private sector. Winning is the only thing that matters and rules don’t apply.

  11. I would agree n Belfrages obvious media coverage hypocrisy. Not saying he reads the Argus but constantly quoting them is utterly childish.

    And who the hell would listen to that BS business show after him. Flush that format Midwest Communications.

  12. Scott, I admit, I may not know as much about the Belfrage Show to understand whether or not the interview may or may not violate any campaign law or not. I guess it comes down whether or not the current mayor is using that 2 hour time period for City related business or his campaign. Being a sitting mayor, he still has the right to direct the city forward, do his job, while at the same time, hes also directing his campaign in a simultaneous side by side position.

    Now if you are going to complain about the Mayor, and how he manages his campaign, stop and think about how David Zokaites has managed his campaign as well.

    If campaign laws are to be followed – how is it that David Zokaites is allowed to advertise his campaign on his personal vehicle for nearly 4 years, do campaign signs not have to be removed from physical site outside of the public election period? And, could many of David’s public commentary comments be theory, campaign speeches each Tuesday Night. You cant prove any of that, NO, the same would be true for the current mayor on the radio show…

    I am not attacking David Zokaites, hes a great guy, very entertaining and I love talking to him, but if you are going to hold one man accountable, you got to hold all people accountable as well.

    Just a few additional thoughts as I ponder this topic…

  13. David has already been warned that he cannot talk about his candidacy at the podium. As for the KELO thing, neither Paul or KELO have done anything wrong . . . Yet! If Taneeza and David request equal free time on the station, they have to provide it or a FCC complaint can be filed. This doesn’t affect Paul one bit, except is ongoing resume building for doing unethical things while pretending to be ignorant.

  14. “…ongoing resume building for doing unethical things while pretending to be ignorant”…..

    If I had that reality on my resume. I would give its own title line:

    Alternative Facts Coordinator

    And I would place it under the category of volunteer work as well. Because I like to use my own toolbox a lot when doing “volunteer work” for the community.

  15. Unethical Things? Please explain further… not sure if he has done anything unethical, maybe I am blind, but I sometimes wonder where these claims originate.

  16. scott,

    I believe so. He once gave Trump a B+. He would probably even wear a tie for him, too….

    ( and Woodstock adds: “Say, has anyone ever checked Putin’s phone?”…. )

  17. “That Putin, I tell ya”… “Well, I ought to…..”…. “So help me….”I, I…. “…..

  18. “‘John Birch Society’?”…. “I know mid century furniture is still popular, but JBS?”….. “Let me guess, will Mike also be inviting people over to his place some evening to listen to and discuss the finer points of JBS on a 33 LP played on a Montgomery Wards record player?”….

  19. FYI: While Wikipedia is admittedly not a definitive authority on, well, anything . . . . it is stated there that “Talk shows and other regular news programming from syndicators, such as Entertainment Tonight, are also declared exempt from the rule by the FCC on a case-by-case basis.” As much as I taste vomit if I hear a Belfrage broadcast, his freak show may well be considered a “talk show”, and thus exempt from the Equal Time rule. More in-depth research may reveal otherwise. I certainly welcome hearing about it.

  20. Blas, I did see that, and I would assume that will probably be KELO’s out. But I would argue that his show isn’t about gardening or sports, it is about politics and a lot of local politics. So if this is reviewed on a case by case basis, they would have consider that. Either way, I will admit, there really isn’t much I can do about it except bitch about it here. I am NOT a candidate for mayor, so I really have no authority to call KELO and give the candidates equal time. I have reached out to David about it but have not heard back. I also mentioned it to a Taneeza campaign helper.

  21. i heard belfrage take a call from one of these local chuds who blamed “kelo-tv” (no relation to kelo-am radio) for a news story that a local child had died from covid. the caller got the tv anchor’s name wrong, citing “erik thorstensen” instead of “don jorgensen” or else the station he mentioned was the wrong one, and continued by saying that since the child had other health conditions his death wasn’t caused by covid. the caller then said the virus was all a hoax, and Belfrage passed on the opportunity to fact check him at all. F’k belfrage.

  22. “….and continued by saying that since the child had other health conditions his death wasn’t caused by covid. the caller then said the virus was all a hoax…”

    Yep, we’ve got cousins down in Texas who pass that same bullshit forward on FB. Hell, most likely covid was the killer. These are the same people who last year said covid was the flu because there were very few flu cases documented last year. But the reason for the lack of documentation was because flu numbers were down drastically last year due to better mask wearing. This winter, flu victims are up tremendously and so was covid, while mask wearing has wand tremendously. I see a correlation.

    And if he called him “Erik Thorstensen”, then he probably is a dyslexic who sadly uses his disability as a license to say and promote anything.

    ( and Woodstock adds: “‘Erik Th….. ‘?”….. “That would make a great alias”…. 😉 )

  23. another thing on Belfrage’s show the one day I tuned in (as above), was that one or more of his dipshit callers-in said Mike Rounds and John Thune both need to go because they admit that Tand believe that Trump lost the election fair and square, and Belfrage had nothing to say against it. He lovingly tolerates the Big Lie. so maybe if TenHaken comes on again he can remember to tell us who he believes is the President.

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