NeutralObserver

Yes, but that was about three presidents ago and it was only him. Anything that happened then has been stopped for years. The issue that got him fired wasn't from giving diplomas, it was from counting credits that shouldn't have been counted which inflated the attendance numbers. Any issues with foreign students was uncovered after that president left, and was cleared up by 2015(?) when their accreditation was renewed for 10 years.

There's maybe three realistic options. 1)Frontier with Dickinson St 2)D3 UMAC 3)Independent This story talks about D2 as an option, but I don't see them getting into the Northern Sun even if they wanted to. https://www.grandforksherald.com/sports/college/mayville-state-weighs-options-for-future-conference-home

The Bismarck Event Center has a huge scoreboard in the middle that gets in the way. Their kickers have just had to learn how to kick around it. The only reason the current Bismarck indoor team paused operations is that they got the law changed regarding workman's comp that made it unaffordable to have a team. Now that they got it changed they plan to come back in 2025, but we'll have to see if and where they play.

The United flights for Jamestown and Devil's Lake are their only flights, they have no Delta flights, so they really aren't ahead of Grand Forks in any way. They are also bundled together, the Jamestown flight goes up to Devil's Lake before going on to Denver. Which that kind of flight path isn't real common right now but must help make the flights financially work. Dickinson had Delta flights during the height of the oil boom but those are gone, the United flights there I believe still have EAS subsidies.

It's not even context. The #1 area is St Charles, MO, which is literally a suburb of St Louis. It would be like rating Edina or Bloomington, MN as #1 "smalll" college area if they had a college. According to the article, they took anywhere outside of a metropolitan area. But St Charles is literally still in the St Louis Metro area, so they are using a very loose definition of what is in a metro area and what isn't.

With all the subchannels available, in Bismarck you would get around 32 channels total. Which is from 6 channels, that is true, but most of them have multiple sub channels. (I'm getting the channels that are available from this site, if anyone is interested: https://rabbitears.info/market.php ) Dickinson and Williston each get 11 (but not ABC, because Forum has never cared about the far west, even though they own the Dickinson Press.) Where the digital transition does suck is for towns like Bowman, like you mention. If you look at the sites that predict coverage, from this same rabbit ears site I can see in Bowman on the outskirts of town, where you are higher up you might get 1 or 2 at best. Where I'm guessing they used to get strong signals for CBS and PBS, if not NBC. The fact that congress and the FCC did not try to make sure coverage areas stayed the same for areas like this was a failure of that whole transition.

Just some more information since not everyone knew of BEK: BEK broadcasts on the old KXJB signal for the Fargo market, and the old FOX stations signals for Bismarck/Minot. I believe they are on most cable systems because of that (being over the air), so they should be statewide. Or at least their main channel is statewide. They have a second channel, but that is only on the co-op cable systems, Midco doesn't carry that. They do show a lot of high school sports, but also show some college sports and the Bismarck Bucks IFL team. They started from BEK Telecomm co-op in Steele as an online sports network until they got onto the TV stations.

This is semantics... but to me, shutting down entirely would mean stopping all broadcasting of WDAZ and tearing down the TV tower. They did not do that, the station is still broadcasting. Just no local news. The worst thing is that you can't even blame some national corporate ownership, since Forum is "Local". Speaking as a complete outsider, the idea that a town of 50000+ can't support local news is ridiculous. KUMV in Williston still has reporters stationed there and I think still has local news inserts. Although it is true that sending reporters from Bismarck to Williston to cover stories is much harder thing to do than from Fargo to Grand Forks.

If the FCC approves it. If it went through, you'd have NBC and CBS owned by Gray, and ABC and Fox owned by Forum. Sioux Falls has ABC, NBC and Fox all owned by Gray, and CBS owned by Nexstar, so a waiver for a market that size or bigger isn't impossible. Forum will just have to argue that it is in the public's best interest to have co-ownership.

If the Vikings win both remaining games, they are guaranteed at least #5 now, with Seattle losing to Arizona yesterday. That would mean a trip to Philly or Dallas.

Still, it is not the schools that will be paying. Athletes would get paid outside of school for helping advertise a business or their name/likeness being used with a product. Only the top athletes at any school will be able to benefit from it. Most kids won't benefit from it.

They are playing the Yankees. They will be in prime time games as much as possible because that's what the networks will want.

They played Eastern Washington on the road, not at home. So that is not a picture of Saturday's game.

You can't make moves until the other teams are ready, and with the two wild cards some teams are still in that race even if they don't have a chance at their division. It also depends on what the other teams are asking for. If they want both of the Twin's top minor league prospects, you have to wait for their price to come down. The deadline is what forces the sellers to accept something more reasonable for what they are trading away.

Morningside struggled in D2 so they are in the NAIA now and are very happy. They'd have to go D2 first before D1, and I just don't see them wanting to.

Killdeer is only 30 miles from Dickinson. If they really started to grow, I think that would benefit Dickinson's market more than Williston's.

The difference with the Twins franchise is they've actually won a couple championships. I understand the negative, fatalistic views when it comes to the Vikings or Timberwolves, but not the Twins. Especially with a coaching staff letting the players hit it out, unlike what they wanted under Gardenhire. Sit back, relax, and enjoy it. Maybe these negative people are too young to remember 1987 and 1991, but it happened then, it can happen again.

The Dickinson Press has issues too. Forum eliminated the Sunday paper. They get Saturday and Sunday papers combined on Saturday. They eliminated delivery, and it only comes through the mail now, Tuesday through Saturday. So if you liked to look at your paper over breakfast you are out of luck there. There is still pretty decent local sports coverage. Probably fortunate that Forum doesn't own the Bismarck Tribune, so they have to have reporters on staff in Dickinson to cover the local teams.

That is where Bismarck State comes in. They have people from all over the country and even outside the country going there to attend their energy programs. My daughter's boyfriend came up here from Texas, had an internship in Tioga last summer, and got a job at the Marathon refinery near South Heart lined up before he even graduated. He's starting at $36 an hour. He has other friends that came from out of state and are staying to start their careers.

Morris is a public school, though. Is the MIAC willing to let in a public school when they are all private now? Some of those conferences get picky when it comes to public/private.

Forum recently announced that they are moving the Dickinson Press to Mail delivery only. No more carriers. They have a special agreement with the post office to pick up the papers in the morning, and it will come with that day's mail. If you liked reading the paper with breakfast, you will be soon out of luck. Wonder how long it will take for them to use this idea for their bigger papers?

The official 2017 estimates had Williston at 25586, down slightly from 2016. 2018 estimates will be released next year. The newspaper article posted earlier in this thread was misleading, as the article writer was confusing Williams County population with Williston. The 34000 number was for the whole county. Williston has been around 25-26000 the last three years. Here is the link to the North Dakota table, it shows each year since 2010 for each town in the state. https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk

As far as NBC, Dickinson lost their local news in the mid to late 90s, when Meyer TV still owned the stations. Williston still has local news, and Jon Cole still does sports up there. I'm guessing the distance from Bismarck and the huge amount of Montana that gets KUMV is part of why they still have theirs, they can do news more relevant to the area than Bismarck could. On the CBS side, Dickinson hasn't had local news since Reiten bought the station in the 80s and turned it into KXMA. Other than When Tom Szymanski was at KXMB, there was a time when they'd insert weather forecasts specifically for Dickinson, but they stopped that by the time he moved back to Fargo. I have no idea if KXMD ever had local news, I am going to assume not.

I'm guessing they are talking about how small the GNAC is - that is the conference that Central Washington is in, and if they lose another school they will be in really tough shape with only 4 teams for football. Can't have a conference with 4 teams. Dixie St joined the RMAC, though, so they won't be affected. Simon Fraser, Humboldt St, Western Oregon, Azusa Pacific are the other football schools that would be affected.

It is strange. You almost want them to win the division but be the 3 seed so that they don't have home field advantage.