SALEM, S.D. -- 9 On Your Side’s signal gets beamed out from a sky-high tower, but somebody has to change out that giant lightbulb at the top when it burns out.
It was just another day at work for tower climber Kevin Schmidt, but incredible drone footage shot from 1,500 feet aloft has taken more than 8.5 million viewers atop the now-inactive KDLT-TV antenna near Salem, South Dakota.
Watch in the video player above, reproduced with permission from Prairie Aerial Videography.
Father-son team Todd and Joseph Thorin shot the drone footage for Prairie Aerial and submitted it to the architecture category of the 2016 New York City Drone Film Festival. They didn't win (see the winning film here), but they said it was an honor to be considered.
“To be honest, I didn’t really, necessarily think we were going to get in cause I don’t know the nature of the film festival,” Joseph Thorin told KDLT. “It just validated to us that the kind of work we do is on the level with these other … you know, professionals who are pioneering industry.”
The clip of the death-defying climb, which features Schmidt pausing at 1,500 feet up for a quick selfie, was shown alongside films from National Geographic, Cirque du Soleil and NBC News.
Want to see more incredible scenes from a bird's-eye view? Check out videos here from WCPO's very own Sky 9 quadcopter as it captures the Tri-State from above.
