Nonprofit online streaming platform Locast is coming to the Upper Midwest, making itself available in the Rapid City and Sioux Falls markets.
The Locast website lists all of the full-power stations, including subchannels, in each market as being carried except for Pioneer Public Television’s KSMN/20 (Worthington, MN), which is licensed within the Sioux Falls market. Viewers in the Sioux Falls market report the channels are available.
Locast limits its feeds to people who live in Designated Market Areas defined by Nielsen; the vast Rapid City and Sioux Falls DMA’s cover all but two counties in South Dakota as well as some counties in southwestern Minnesota, northwestern Iowa, north-central Nebraska, northeastern Wyoming, and southeastern Montana.
The streamer refers to itself as a “digital translator service,” exploiting a loophole in copyright rules that became known when previous commercial efforts to stream local TV signals online (without consent of the stations) were shut down by courts. Rulings have found that nonprofit organizations can retransmit broadcast signals without consent, and so far, Locast has apparently not been challenged.
Though it is a nonprofit, Locast does accept donations to cover the cost of providing the service.
Some paid streaming TV services, including YouTube TV, also offer some South Dakota stations.