SIOUX FALLS, A new appliance at our KELOLAND Media Group studio in downtown Sioux Falls will help us celebrate this year’s 70th anniversary of the Captain 11 show.
A retired Lutheran minister has restored a TV dating back to 1950, a full three years before we even went on the air!
We retrace the TV’s journey from a 1950s-era living room to our front lobby in 2025.
An old TV that was kept in storage for years at KELOLAND TV has now come full circle.
“First, when I go to light it up, I think is it going to light up? I hope it does. And when it does, it’s kind of a feeling of… ahhh. Yes! Thank you,” Jerry Merkouris said.
Jerry Merkouris can breathe easy now that he’s given new life to this 1950 RCA Victor. He performed a complete overhaul of the set at his workshop in Valley Springs.
“Took everything out. The picture tube, the old chassis and then started to do a cleanup and build kind of a wooden floor in there for framing,” Merkouris said.
An early viewer donated the old set to KELOLAND TV decades ago.
“So we went out to their house, grabbed it, brought it back to the station, it sat in the engineering shop for years and years and years,” KELOLAND Media Group Marketing and Creative Services Director Paul Farmer said.
The TV sold for $199 when it was brand-new. It had a lived-in look by the time Merkouris started working on it.
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“There was a big stain on the front. One of your people suggested coffee. I think it was something a little stronger than that,” Merkouris said.
So Merkouris reupholstered the front of the TV. He also replaced the cigarette smoke-stained knobs. He even retrofitted the set to play DVD’s of old KELOLAND programming.
“This is special for us here at KELOLAND. To have this television restored so we can display it in the lobby and people can enjoy a little bit of history of television,” Farmer said.
This is how our early viewers of KELOLAND watched TV back in the early 1950’s. Families from throughout the neighborhood would huddle around the 13-inch screen to see what was on.
“If you had the first television on the block, maybe in your town, people would come. Popular events would be like boxing on Friday nights, wrestling was a big thing when I grew up,” Merkouris said.
Merkouris did all the work for free. And now he’s sharing this labor of love with our viewers.
“KELO is the birthplace of television in South Dakota. I think it’s appropriate to have your old unit playing right here in public,” Merkouris said.
Merkouris said this TV was a little more difficult to work with than other TV’s he’s restored because of its narrow width.
We first introduced you to Merkouris in December when he showed us his collection of vintage TVs that were part of an open house he was hosting on New Year’s Day.
