WCCO-TV

WCCO-TV (channel 4), branded CBS Minnesota, is a television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, serving the Twin Cities area. It is owned and operated by the CBS television network through its CBS News and Stations division, and maintains studios on South 11th Street along Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis; its transmitter is located at the Telefarm complex in Shoreview, Minnesota.

WCCO-TV's programming is also seen on full-power satellite station KCCW-TV (channel 12) in Walker (with transmitter near Hackensack). Nielsen Media Research treats WCCO-TV and KCCW-TV as one station in local ratings books, using the identifier name WCCO+. From 1987 until 2017, WCCO-TV operated a second satellite, KCCO-TV (virtual and VHF digital channel 7) in Alexandria (with transmitter near Westport).

WCCO is one of three owned-and-operated network affiliates in the Twin Cities market, the others being Fox O&O KMSP-TV (channel 9) and MyNetworkTV O&O WFTC (channel 9.2).

WCCO-TV's roots originate with a radio station, but not WCCO (830 AM). WRHM, which signed on the air in 1925, is the radio station to which WCCO-TV traces its lineage. In 1934, two newspapers—the Minneapolis Tribune and the Saint Paul Pioneer Press-Dispatch—formed a joint venture by the name of "Twin Cities Newspapers", which purchased the radio station and changed its call letters to WTCN. Twin Cities Newspapers later expanded into the fledgling FM band with WTCN-FM, and shortly thereafter to the then-new medium of television with the launch of WTCN-TV on July 1, 1949, becoming Minnesota's second television station, broadcasting from the Radio City Theater at 50 South 9th Street in downtown Minneapolis. The station's first president was Robert Ridder. Channel 4 has been a primary CBS affiliate since its sign on; it is the only major commercial station in the Minneapolis–St. Paul market not to have changed its primary affiliation. However, it had a secondary affiliation with ABC during its early years, from 1949 to 1953, until a new station using the WTCN-TV calls (now KARE-TV) picked up the ABC affiliation, retaining it from its 1953 sign on until 1961 when it became an independent station; it has been affiliated with NBC since 1979.

Twin Cities Newspapers sold off its broadcast holdings in 1952, with channel 4 going to the Murphy and McNally families, who had recently bought the Twin Cities' dominant radio station, WCCO, from CBS. The stations merged under a new company, Midwest Radio and Television, with CBS as a minority partner. The call letters of channel 4 were changed to WCCO-TV to match its new radio sibling on August 17 (the WTCN-TV call sign appeared again in the market the following year on the new channel 11). CBS was forced to sell its minority ownership stake in the WCCO stations in 1954 to comply with Federal Communications Commission ownership limits of the time.

The station began telecasting color programs in 1955. In 1959, WCCO became the first station in the Midwest to have a videotape machine; it came at a cost of $50,000 and one part-time employee was hired to operate the machine.

On July 23, 1962, WCCO-TV was involved in the world's first live international broadcast via the Telstar satellite; the station's mobile units provided the feed for all three networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, for a program originating from native land in the Black Hills showing Mount Rushmore to the world.

During the fall of 1979, WCCO-TV and radio experienced a labor dispute when the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), the union representing many of the stations' technical and production personnel, went on strike. Despite the walkout, the stations maintained their daily broadcast schedules, utilizing non-striking employees, including management and news personnel, to cover the essential functions. For WCCO-TV, this meant that news director Ron Handberg and anchor Skip Loescher were notably involved in producing and presenting the news, as seen in broadcasts from the period.