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"I always considered DAZ the little station that could, especially in sports coverage." "I don't know how many other stations in the country were doing coaches shows that featured a women's basketball coach at the time," Sweeney said. Sweeney, who started at WDAZ as a weekend sports anchor in 1982 and was its sports director until he left the station in 2014, said WDAZ did things with sports coverage that stations in larger markets weren't doing, such as the UND basketball coaches show that started in 1989, which featured the coach of the women's team as well as the men's basketball coach. We had to do this in stages whereby all of these things kept going." "That was a phenomenal thing, to physically move a television station to a different location," Dean said. Dean recalled the challenge of moving the station's operations from downtown to its current building on South Washington Street in 1994. Not all the memories were tied to tragic events. "It's a terrible ending, but the fact of everyone coming together was really powerful," current anchor Stacie Van Dyke said. The station was recognized with an Emmy Award for its coverage of another community search in August 2013, when 11-year-old Anthony Kuznia wandered from his home and drowned in the Red River. "It was so ongoing because there was a search," Horken said of the coverage. 22, 2003, was also an important event the station's history. WDAZ's coverage of the abduction of Dru Sjodin on Nov. "That was probably the pinnacle of having something huge happen in your local TV market." "I often joke that the most important moment of my career happened when I was 29 years old," he said. "I just felt so rusty."įormer anchor and producer Milo Smith had been at the station almost exactly a year at the time of the flood. "That was the first time I had done news in 15 years," he said. Longtime sports anchor Pat Sweeney remembers stopping sportscasts starting April 18, 1997, so the sports reporters could help with the news instead. The TV station's local focus also made some of Grand Forks' most dramatic moments part of WDAZ's history.ĭuring the 1997 flood, the station never went off the air during the disaster and worked out of trailers outside its building. You'd kind of follow that dream along with them." "You'd see how developments were coming along. "You'd check back on these people," he said. We're impacted by all of these things that are in the news."ĭean also liked the station's ability to follow stories for sometimes months or even years. "We're residents here, too, who are impacted by taxes or impacted by conflict that may happen. "(The reporters) would really care about these stories," he said. Several longtime reporters had a familiarity with the Grand Forks community that gave them an attachment to the stories they reported. "What defined the station was that we had our own news department here," said Horken, who was the station's manager and gave on-camera fishing reports in the character of Ernie the Angler.ĭean said he liked that WDAZ wasn't a revolving door for reporters.