Former Iowa and Minnesota radio station owner, past Minnesota Broadcasters Association president, and Pavek Museum of Broadcasting co-founder Paul Hedberg has died at the age of 81.
Hedberg got his start in radio in 1956 when, at the age of 17, he helped his father, Clifford Hedberg, sign on KMRS (Morris). He worked at several Twin Cities radio stations before building KBEW (Blue Earth) in 1963.
Hedberg Broadcasting eventually owned 21 radio stations in nine Minnesota and northern Iowa communities, including Mankato, Luverne, Mason City, Algona, Spirit Lake, Storm Lake, and Sioux Center. In the 1970s, he also founded a service that used FM subcarriers to distribute farm market data and Blue Earth’s cable TV system.
His obituary states that Hedberg put a premium on live and local content with the philosophy that what mattered most wasn’t the programming format but what was broadcast around the music. Hedberg wrote about his experiences building the stations in his 2014 memoir, The Time of My Life.
“In 40 years I’d gone through FCC rules that prohibited dual ownership of stations in the same community to a time when you could own virtually every station licensed to a community. These FCC rule changes continue to have a huge impact on the broadcasting industry,” he wrote in explaining his addition of second FM signals in the Sioux Center and Spirit Lake markets.
Facing competition from an influx of new stations and technologies, Hedberg sold most of his remaining stations to Waitt Radio in 1999.
“It was a long day for me, and I still get some tears in my eyes when I think about it,” Hedberg wrote of the sale.
In addition to serving as president of the Minnesota Broadcasters Association, Hedberg also served three terms on the National Association of Broadcasters board of directors. He was named broadcaster of the year by the Iowa Broadcasters Association in 1998 and inducted into the Minnesota Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2001.
Hedberg died May 27 in Southlake, Texas. He is survived by his wife Julie, their children Mark and Ann, and three grandchildren.
Funeral services are planned for this summer in Spirit Lake. The family asks that memorials be sent to the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting.