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KARE (TV)
KARE (channel 11) is a television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, serving as the NBC affiliate for the Twin Cities area. Owned by Tegna Inc., the station maintains studios on Olson Memorial Highway (MN 55) in Golden Valley and a transmitter at the Telefarm Towers in Shoreview, Minnesota.
Channel 11 began broadcasting on September 1, 1953. It was originally shared by WMIN-TV in St. Paul and WTCN-TV in Minneapolis; the two stations shared an affiliation with ABC and alternated presenting local programs. In 1955, Consolidated Television and Radio bought both stations and merged them as WTCN-TV from the Minneapolis studios in the Calhoun Beach Hotel. The station presented several regionally and nationally notable children's shows in its early years as well as local cooking, news, and sports programs. Time Inc. purchased the station in 1957. Under its ownership, ABC switched its affiliation to KMSP-TV (channel 9), leaving channel 11 to become an independent station that broadcast games of the Minnesota Twins baseball team, movies, and syndicated programs. This continued under two successive owners: Chris-Craft Industries and Metromedia. By the late 1970s, WTCN was one of the nation's most financially successful independent stations.
In 1978, NBC's Twin Cities affiliate, KSTP-TV, announced it would switch its affiliation to ABC. This forced NBC to select between KMSP and WTCN for its new local outlet. It chose WTCN on the strength of its facilities, ownership, and promise to build a first-class news operation, for which KMSP had never been known as an ABC station. On March 5, 1979, channel 11 became an NBC affiliate and began broadcasting NewsCenter 11 newscasts. In spite of a major promotional campaign, the news product was a high-profile commercial failure, beaten by entertainment shows on KMSP in the ratings, as viewers rejected the new news team and continued to prefer market leaders WCCO-TV and KSTP-TV.
Metromedia agreed to buy Chicago independent station WFLD in 1982 and sold WTCN to Gannett to raise capital and make room in its station group. Gannett engineered a comprehensive overhaul of the station's news programming. Between 1983 and 1987, the station moved from last to first in late news ratings, battling WCCO for two decades. It changed call signs twice in that period, to WUSA in 1985 and KARE in 1986, when Gannett moved the WUSA call sign to its Washington, D.C., station. More recently, as of 2022, the station has been a second-place finisher in local news.
The WMIN Broadcasting Company of St. Paul applied in February 1948 for a new station licensed to that city on channel 2. The application was frozen when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) halted all grants of new TV stations in 1948.
In February 1952—two months before the FCC lifted the freeze—the Minnesota Television Public Service Corporation, a company headed by former ambassador Robert Butler and headquartered in St. Paul, filed for television channel 11 in Minneapolis. Weeks later, Mid Continent Radio Television, which owned station WTCN-TV on channel 4 as well as WTCN (1280 AM), announced it would take over WCCO radio, combine its operations with channel 4, and divest WTCN radio. Minnesota Television Public Service then acquired WTCN radio, which had to be sold to allow Mid Continent to purchase WCCO. The transactions were approved in August 1952, at which time channel 4 changed from WTCN-TV to WCCO-TV.
After the freeze was lifted, WMIN refiled its pre-freeze application in July to specify channel 11, as channel 2 had been set aside for educational broadcasting by the FCC. Later that month, Meredith Publishing filed for channel 11 in Minneapolis alongside stations in Rochester, New York, and St. Louis. Meredith owned three stations and had three pending station applications when the FCC ruled that companies could only have as many applications as additional stations it could own—the limit being five—in February 1953. With six stations and applications for stations, the company was one over the limit; it then dropped out of the channel 11 fight. WMIN and WTCN—each seeking to avoid a lengthy comparative hearing—proposed to share time on channel 11, which the FCC accepted in April 1953.
On September 1, 1953, channel 11 began broadcasting. At 2 p.m., the first WMIN-TV programs aired: a news show, the women's program Talk About the Town, and a movie. Two hours later, WTCN-TV greeted viewers with a dedication, the cooking show Man Around the House, and a teen music bandstand program, Corner Drug. Channel 11's signal originated from the Foshay Tower in downtown Minneapolis; the tower had a master antenna inspired by the Empire State Building in New York and designed to broadcast multiple stations, including the antenna for WCCO-TV and provision for antennas for channels 9 and 11 before any applicant had a construction permit for them.
KARE (TV)
KARE (channel 11) is a television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, serving as the NBC affiliate for the Twin Cities area. Owned by Tegna Inc., the station maintains studios on Olson Memorial Highway (MN 55) in Golden Valley and a transmitter at the Telefarm Towers in Shoreview, Minnesota.
Channel 11 began broadcasting on September 1, 1953. It was originally shared by WMIN-TV in St. Paul and WTCN-TV in Minneapolis; the two stations shared an affiliation with ABC and alternated presenting local programs. In 1955, Consolidated Television and Radio bought both stations and merged them as WTCN-TV from the Minneapolis studios in the Calhoun Beach Hotel. The station presented several regionally and nationally notable children's shows in its early years as well as local cooking, news, and sports programs. Time Inc. purchased the station in 1957. Under its ownership, ABC switched its affiliation to KMSP-TV (channel 9), leaving channel 11 to become an independent station that broadcast games of the Minnesota Twins baseball team, movies, and syndicated programs. This continued under two successive owners: Chris-Craft Industries and Metromedia. By the late 1970s, WTCN was one of the nation's most financially successful independent stations.
In 1978, NBC's Twin Cities affiliate, KSTP-TV, announced it would switch its affiliation to ABC. This forced NBC to select between KMSP and WTCN for its new local outlet. It chose WTCN on the strength of its facilities, ownership, and promise to build a first-class news operation, for which KMSP had never been known as an ABC station. On March 5, 1979, channel 11 became an NBC affiliate and began broadcasting NewsCenter 11 newscasts. In spite of a major promotional campaign, the news product was a high-profile commercial failure, beaten by entertainment shows on KMSP in the ratings, as viewers rejected the new news team and continued to prefer market leaders WCCO-TV and KSTP-TV.
Metromedia agreed to buy Chicago independent station WFLD in 1982 and sold WTCN to Gannett to raise capital and make room in its station group. Gannett engineered a comprehensive overhaul of the station's news programming. Between 1983 and 1987, the station moved from last to first in late news ratings, battling WCCO for two decades. It changed call signs twice in that period, to WUSA in 1985 and KARE in 1986, when Gannett moved the WUSA call sign to its Washington, D.C., station. More recently, as of 2022, the station has been a second-place finisher in local news.
The WMIN Broadcasting Company of St. Paul applied in February 1948 for a new station licensed to that city on channel 2. The application was frozen when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) halted all grants of new TV stations in 1948.
In February 1952—two months before the FCC lifted the freeze—the Minnesota Television Public Service Corporation, a company headed by former ambassador Robert Butler and headquartered in St. Paul, filed for television channel 11 in Minneapolis. Weeks later, Mid Continent Radio Television, which owned station WTCN-TV on channel 4 as well as WTCN (1280 AM), announced it would take over WCCO radio, combine its operations with channel 4, and divest WTCN radio. Minnesota Television Public Service then acquired WTCN radio, which had to be sold to allow Mid Continent to purchase WCCO. The transactions were approved in August 1952, at which time channel 4 changed from WTCN-TV to WCCO-TV.
After the freeze was lifted, WMIN refiled its pre-freeze application in July to specify channel 11, as channel 2 had been set aside for educational broadcasting by the FCC. Later that month, Meredith Publishing filed for channel 11 in Minneapolis alongside stations in Rochester, New York, and St. Louis. Meredith owned three stations and had three pending station applications when the FCC ruled that companies could only have as many applications as additional stations it could own—the limit being five—in February 1953. With six stations and applications for stations, the company was one over the limit; it then dropped out of the channel 11 fight. WMIN and WTCN—each seeking to avoid a lengthy comparative hearing—proposed to share time on channel 11, which the FCC accepted in April 1953.
On September 1, 1953, channel 11 began broadcasting. At 2 p.m., the first WMIN-TV programs aired: a news show, the women's program Talk About the Town, and a movie. Two hours later, WTCN-TV greeted viewers with a dedication, the cooking show Man Around the House, and a teen music bandstand program, Corner Drug. Channel 11's signal originated from the Foshay Tower in downtown Minneapolis; the tower had a master antenna inspired by the Empire State Building in New York and designed to broadcast multiple stations, including the antenna for WCCO-TV and provision for antennas for channels 9 and 11 before any applicant had a construction permit for them.