KARE (TV)

WMIN-TV and WTCN-TV: The shared-time era

The WMIN Broadcasting Company of St. Paul applied in February 1948 for a new station licensed to that city on channel 2.^[3] The application was frozen when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) halted all grants of new TV stations in 1948.^[4]

In February 1952—two months before the FCC lifted the freeze^[5]—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.^[6] 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.^[7] Minnesota Television Public Service then acquired WTCN radio, which had to be sold to allow Mid Continent to purchase WCCO.^[8] The transactions were approved in August 1952, at which time channel 4 changed from WTCN-TV to WCCO-TV.^[9]

After the freeze was lifted, WMIN refiled its pre-freeze application in July to specify channel 11,^[10] as channel 2 had been set aside for educational broadcasting by the FCC.^[11] Later that month, Meredith Publishing filed for channel 11 in Minneapolis alongside stations in Rochester, New York, and St. Louis.^[12] 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.^[13] 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.^[14]

The Hamm Building (above) housed the studios of WMIN-TV between 1953 and 1955, while WTCN-TV originated from the Calhoun Beach Hotel between 1953 and 1974.

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.^[15] Channel 11's signal originated from the Foshay Tower in downtown Minneapolis;^[16] 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.^[17]

The transmitter and antenna were the only physical facilities shared by the stations. While WMIN-TV and WTCN-TV were affiliates of ABC, in keeping with WTCN radio,^[18] their programs and even network shows during each station's airtime originated from separate facilities. WMIN-TV set up in the former WMIN radio studios in the Hamm Building in St. Paul, the radio station having relocated to its transmitter site;^[19] it had no film developing equipment, so films had to be airmailed to and from sister station KELO-TV in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.^[20] WTCN-TV established itself in the Calhoun Beach Hotel in Minneapolis. The hotel offered the station the use of its ballroom; its former gymnasium, left unfinished when the former beach club converted to a hotel, became the largest TV studio to that time in the Twin Cities.^[19]

Each station offered its own local programs. WMIN had the children's show Captain 11, featuring host Jim Lange^[21] in a space-themed outfit.^[22][a] It also featured Wrangler Steve, a host of Westerns played by WMIN radio disc jockey Steve Cannon.^[21] For kids, WTCN had the clown J. P. Patches, originally played by Daryl Laub and then by Chris Wedes.^[27] Wedes left for the new KIRO-TV in Seattle in 1958;^[28] Patches aired on the Seattle station until 1981.^[29] For 19 years, Roger Awsumb played Casey Jones on WTCN's Lunch with Casey.^[21]

By 1954, channel 11 was offering some programming from the DuMont Television Network,^[30] though the network's shows moved to new station KEYD-TV (channel 9) when it launched in January 1955.^[31]

Consolidated consolidation and purchase by Time, Inc.

In January 1955, Consolidated Television and Radio Broadcasters of Indianapolis, a company owned by the Bitner family, agreed to acquire WTCN radio and television and WMIN-TV for about $3 million. Bitner believed that the channel 11 stations made for an attractive purchase because their values were artificially lowered by confusion stemming from the shared-station setup.^[32] It announced that it would keep the WTCN call letters.^[33] When Consolidated completed the purchase in April, WMIN left the air and merged into the full-time WTCN. At that time, the new owner consolidated the station's activities at WTCN's Minneapolis studios and closed WMIN's St. Paul facilities, with only a handful of WMIN technical employees not continuing with channel 11.^[34] During this time, the station affiliated with the NTA Film Network, which began in 1956.^[35]

The Bitner group had owned the WTCN stations for less than two years when it announced the sale of three of its broadcasting properties—the WTCN stations, WFBM radio and television in Indianapolis, and WLAV radio and television in Grand Rapids, Michigan—to Time, Inc. in December 1956. The $15.75 million deal came after the Crowell-Collier Publishing Company backed out of a transaction for the stations plus WFDF in Flint, Michigan.^[36] FCC approval followed in April 1957.^[37] Time improved station revenues by expanding its movie library and sharpening its promotion of feature films.^[38] It offered a large schedule of local sports, including select games of Minneapolis Millers minor league baseball, which WTCN radio broadcast all season long; the station cut back its sports broadcasts on radio and TV due to difficulty selling advertising time and intense competition, particularly for the radio broadcasts of Minnesota Golden Gophers football.^[39]

Loss of ABC affiliation

By the start of the 1960s, Time's relationship with ABC had become strained. Variety reported in March 1960 that station management was insisting on a protection clause, a guarantee that ABC would not go to KMSP-TV (channel 9), an independent station then owned by 20th Century Fox.^[40] KMSP was already carrying some ABC shows that were not seen on channel 11's schedule.^[41] Channel 11's fears were well-founded; in January 1961, ABC announced it would move its programs to KMSP effective April 16.^[42]

The newly independent channel 11 became the market's first station to telecast major league baseball with the newly relocated Minnesota Twins; WCCO-TV had agreed to broadcast the games, but CBS refused to allow the station to preempt prime-time network programs for baseball, forcing channel 4 to back out. The station agreed to telecast 50 night and weekend games, simulcast with WCCO radio, with Bob Wolff and Ray Scott as announcers.^[43] The Twins, movies, and feature programs became the station's top program draws,^[44] as well as newscasts timed to air just before the network affiliates, including hourly news breaks and a 9 p.m. newscast.^[45] To support its new local programming, the station expanded its footprint in the Calhoun Beach Hotel to include space on the lower level and acquired new equipment.^[46] Despite this, Time noted in its annual report that losing ABC was "forcing a re-adjustment to the economies of independent television station operations" at channel 11.^[47]

The Twins proved key to channel 11's survival without a network affiliation. Telecasts reached audience shares averaging 58 percent and as high as 79 percent in 1962. A major advertising contract with Hamm's beer for the baseball games helped the station acquire programming and get on steadier footing—its first profitable footing in its ten-year history. An American Research Bureau report found that the station had the largest relative audience share of any independent in the country, even in months without baseball. Twins games earned channel 11 placement on cable systems far from the Twin Cities, including Mankato and Rochester, Minnesota, and Eau Claire and La Crosse, Wisconsin. Building on the success of the Twins telecasts, the station sought to broaden its image as a sports outlet by adding wrestling (broadcast from the studio) and college sports to its lineup.^[48]

Chris-Craft ownership

In the three years Time owned WTCN-TV as an independent, it negotiated with several groups to sell the television station and WTCN radio. In July 1961, Variety reported that Chicago-based WGN Inc. was considering buying WTCN-TV from Time;^[49] other buyers looked at and passed on the station at this time.^[48] A Twin Cities–based consortium agreed to pay $2 million for the WTCN stations in 1963 but failed to come up with the money.^[50] Chris-Craft Industries agreed to purchase WTCN-TV alone for $4 million in a deal announced in May 1964; it was the company's third TV property after two other independents, KCOP in Los Angeles and KPTV in Portland, Oregon.^[51][52] WTCN radio was sold separately to the Buckley-Jaeger Company^[53] and became WWTC that October.^[54]

Chris-Craft fortified the station's children's and movie offerings to complement its strong sports coverage. The children's relaunch included a kids club and 6+1⁄2 hours a day of weekday shows promoted as "Kidville 11".^[55] The company stated in its 1965 annual report that WTCN-TV's performance "exceeded expectations".^[56] By 1966, the Twins games were being fed by WTCN-TV to a network of 15 television stations,^[57] which grew to 16 with the inclusion of WVTV in Milwaukee the next year;^[58] the Twins were joined on channel 11 in 1967 by the new Minnesota North Stars hockey team.^[59]

In June 1971, WTCN-TV joined other local stations in moving its tower to the Telefarm site in Shoreview, Minnesota. The relocation to the newer, taller masts was necessitated because of the construction of the IDS Center, a Minneapolis skyscraper that shaded many viewers from the Foshay Tower site.^[60][61] The new tower, which was shared by the former Foshay stations—WCCO-TV, KSTP-TV, and WTCN-TV—collapsed on September 7 during further construction work,^[62] killing seven workers.^[63] In lieu of the collapsed candelabra, Telefarm proposed constructing one tower for WTCN-TV and an FM station and another for WCCO and KSTP.^[64] The replacements were erected in late 1972.^[65]

Metromedia ownership

Chris-Craft announced the sale of WTCN-TV to Metromedia for $18 million on July 29, 1971. Chris-Craft sold the station as part of its pursuit of a large-market VHF television station elsewhere.^[67][66] After taking over, Metromedia made major changes in the station's programming. Citing declining ratings and a company policy against live children's hosts, Lunch with Casey finished its run at the end of 1972. Channel 11 dropped the Twins, also due to falling viewership, with the team moving telecasts to WCCO-TV;^[68] the team returned to channel 11 in 1975.^[69] Under Metromedia, WTCN-TV became one of the nation's most financially lucrative independent stations,^[70] even though it was less profitable than the network affiliates.^[71]

Metromedia's purchase of WTCN-TV included a parcel of land at the corner of Boone Avenue and Minnesota State Highway 55 in Golden Valley, intended for the construction of new studios.^[66] Metromedia broke ground on a $5 million, 65,000-square-foot (6,000 m²) studio complex on the site in May 1973; it featured two broadcast studios, an outdoor sculpture garden, and space for Metromedia's corporate art collection.^[72]

While the network affiliates intensified their competition for the news audience, WTCN's small news effort—a 9:30 p.m. newscast known as Total News—was not considered much of a factor in the market, although it was just behind KMSP-TV in total viewers.^[73] Until moving to Golden Valley, all the station's news film was developed by a company in downtown Minneapolis that closed at dinnertime, preventing the broadcast of late-breaking news items.^[74] Gil Amundson doubled as the news director and anchor. WTCN had the only TV news team in the market without a professional meteorologist.^[73] TV Guide ran a feature calling WTCN the real-life equivalent to WJM-TV, the Minneapolis station depicted on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.^[75]

NewsCenter 11: Lackluster performance

NewsCenter 11 was a ratings and critical disaster. Neal Gendler in the Minneapolis Tribune was unimpressed and found the program pedestrian, formulaic, overdone, and out of tune with Twin Cities viewers' tastes. He criticized Kurtz for laughing at skiers in bikinis, writing, "Someone also ought to let him in on a fact of Minnesota life: Sexism is out of style."^[87] John Carman of The Minneapolis Star called it "a near-perfect case history of how not to put together a successful and respected news operation", calling its format too conventional and Gil Amundson (later relieved of news director duties) too weak a leader. Carman and Karl Vick (also of The Minneapolis Star) assigned some blame for the failure to the direction of the station by out-of-town consultants—particularly Ted Kavanau, the former news director of Metromedia's WNEW-TV in New York^[88]—and executives unfamiliar with the market.^[86] Kavanau wanted a tabloid-style newscast in the mold of WNEW and hired people for such a program, but general manager Robert Fransen believed a more conventional format was advisable in the market and prevailed in a meeting of Metromedia executives.^[88]

In its first ratings survey, the station placed fourth out of three newscasts (and KMSP, airing entertainment shows) at 6 p.m.,^[89] enough to be described as "about as popular as the measles" by Vick in The Star;^[90] its performance was so poor that the station, having pledged advertisers a certain level of viewership, had to offer costly makegood ads.^[86] During NBC prime time, the station had 21 percent of the audience, half of which left for other stations during the 10 p.m. news, but viewers returned to channel 11 to watch The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The station attracted 8 to 10 percent of the evening news audience, far behind KSTP and WCCO, which commanded shares of 30 percent or more. The station's poor performance also sank the NBC network newscasts, which fell to third place.^[91] Meanwhile, freed of its network programming and having picked up the North Stars^[92] and Twins^[93] rights, KMSP-TV became one of the nation's leading independents, beating NewsCenter 11 in the ratings just as WTCN had done when KMSP was an ABC affiliate.^[91][88] Kevin O'Brien, WTCN's general manager at the time, later told The Mercury News that switching to NBC "tore that station asunder because we didn't have that much time to plan such a dramatic change".^[94]

While the news product improved under new news director Brink Chipman and as reporters settled into the market,^[88] turmoil engulfed the troubled newsroom. An investigative reporter was fired in July before her reports even appeared on air due to poor-quality work.^[89] Dyer, unhappy nearly from the start, was switched with weekend anchor Stan Bohrman in August and left in December.^[95] At year's end, Kurtz was taken off the weeknight newscasts and replaced with Tom Ryther, formerly of KSTP-TV, returning to the Twin Cities from WKYC-TV in Cleveland.^[91] Burns was the last of the original three news presenters to leave WTCN; in January 1982, he accepted a position with WSB-TV in Atlanta,^[96] where he would spend 40 years.^[97] Ratings improved modestly when channel 11 shifted its early newscast from 6 to 5:30 p.m., moving it out of direct competition with WCCO and KSTP, though it still trailed the national newscasts they offered at that time.^[98] This did not stanch turmoil in the newsroom, nor did it forestall Metromedia from shuttering the profitable Metro Productions commercial production unit of WTCN in December 1980.^[99] One bright spot for the station was a 1982 series on herpes reported by anchor John Bachman, Herpes Is Forever, which won an Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award.^[100]

To increase revenue, which lagged behind other major-market network affiliates, Metromedia ceased airing the network's The Tomorrow Show in favor of sitcoms from which it earned all the advertising, doing the same with the occasional network movie.^[101] In early 1982, the station temporarily lost the ability to air the Tonight Show; NBC strictly enforced the show airing at 10:30 p.m. and would take the show to another station in the market if it was aired on tape delay, which WTCN did to air syndicated repeats of M*A*S*H. WTCN defended its decision by citing Carson's older demographics at a time when his ratings were slipping nationally.^[102][103] When KMSP refused to air Tonight for the same reason, NBC was forced to acquiesce to WTCN's delay.^[104] Asked in 1981 by the Boston Herald American to appraise Metromedia's management of WTCN, M. Howard Gelfand of the Minneapolis Tribune noted that "it has taken WTCN-TV ... just a couple of years to turn a silk purse into a sow's ear".^[101]

Two call sign changes in a year

The FCC liberalized rules around call signs in late 1983.^[125] Gannett—the publisher of USA Today—acquired the rights to the call sign KUSA in early 1984 and won approval to use the letters on the former KBTV in Denver after years of being stymied under the old rules.^[126] While Gannett initially intended to do the same immediately after acquiring WTCN-TV, it instead focused on rebuilding the news operation and beating back a challenge to the KUSA assignment from the USA Network cable service. After Gannett won that fight, it sought and received permission to change WTCN-TV's call sign to WUSA effective July 4, 1985. The new designation replaced WTCN-TV—a call sign associated with the station's independent days—at a time when the station was finally becoming a local news competitor.^[127]

The WUSA call letters lasted less than one year in Minneapolis. Gannett acquired the Evening News Association in February 1986; among its holdings was WDVM, the CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C., near Gannett's corporate headquarters in nearby Rosslyn, Virginia.^[128] From the moment Gannett took that station over, it mulled moving the WUSA call letters to Washington to provide a solid co-association with USA Today as well as Washington being the nation's capital.^[129] In March, John Carmody of The Washington Post reported that Gannett had instructed the Minneapolis station to come up with a new call sign.^[130] The station reached a deal with a radio station in Atchison, Kansas, that had used the KARE call sign since 1949 to use "KARE" and switched to it on June 11.^[131] The new designation was in keeping with the station's heavy community service component since its acquisition by Gannett, including an awards event titled "11 Who Care".^[132] This freed its new sister station, channel 9 in Washington, to switch from WDVM to WUSA.^[133]

Ratings rise

Channel 11's rising news fortunes continued after the call sign change to KARE, coinciding with a turnaround in ratings for the NBC network.^[134] Weeks after becoming KARE came another pivotal moment. On July 18, 1986, helicopter pilot Max Messmer was in the air headed to an assignment when he heard that a funnel cloud was forming in Brooklyn Park, eventually touching down in Fridley. He piloted the helicopter, known as Sky 11, to the scene and ad-libbed commentary as the aircraft flew within a quarter-mile of the tornado.^[135][136] The tornado coverage aired live on KARE's 5 p.m. newscast, providing startling pictures of the storm. It was the first time a tornado had been filmed from creation to dissipation. The newscast was a ratings milestone for the station—in 2011, Douglas recalled that it led many WCCO and KSTP viewers to sample KARE's news—and the raw footage was widely requested by scientists and meteorologists.^[136]

In 1986, the station took the lead among the coveted demographic of adults 25–54, a demographic with which it placed first in all but one ratings survey between 1986 and 2000.^[137] In October 1986, the station notched its first-ever second-place finish in local news ratings, sending KSTP-TV's 10 p.m. news to third. But the station lagged badly in early evening news, contending that its younger viewers were still at work and not able to watch 5 or 6 p.m. newscasts.^[138] The July 1987 sweeps period brought another historic achievement for KARE: it finished first at 10 p.m., with an audience share of 29 percent.^[139] This momentum was sustained through late 1987 and early 1988, even as an expansion to the Twin Cities market gave WCCO an edge in counting viewers in Alexandria.^[140][141] The ratings increase boosted the station's bottom line, as the cost of a 30-second commercial during channel 11's newscasts rose from $200 in 1983 to as much as $2,300 by 1987.^[142]

KARE attracted criticism for its newscasts' style: trendy and designed to draw an emotional response. The latter was evident in its photojournalism style, which the Star Tribune later called "highly visual and emotional"; KARE became a regular winner of National Press Photographers Association awards.^[119] This prompted WCCO-TV, a station known for its hard news format, to become more image-conscious,^[134] and the other TV news outlets in the Twin Cities began incorporating longer, photojournalism-driven stories into their newscasts.^[119] KARE became the first Twin Cities station to offer closed captioning of its local news in 1988.^[143] When the Minnesota Poll in 1988 found KARE's viewership concentrated among young adults, Noel Holston of the Star Tribune predicted that the station could be dominant "for years to come" based on the age of its news watchers.^[114]

In September 1988, Pat Miles left her job at WCCO-TV and signed a five-year agreement to work at KARE, including a year where she could not appear on camera under a non-compete clause. The pact brought Miles, who wanted more personal time, together with channel 11, seeking an anchor to improve the lagging ratings of its early evening newscasts.^[144] Meanwhile, WCCO found renewed ratings strength and pushed KARE back to second.^[145][146]

Under the leadership of general manager Linda Rios Brook, from 1989 to 1991, the station tried several unsuccessful initiatives, most notably a morning talk show titled Between Friends that failed to make an impact in the ratings, but its newscasts regained the local news lead for the first time in several years. Rios Brook resigned after mixed programming results and a controversy over her evangelical Christianity^[147] and resurfaced in the market as the president and general manager of family-oriented KLGT.^[148] At KARE, she was replaced by Hank Price, who had managed WFMY-TV in Greensboro, North Carolina.^[147] In 1992, KARE became one of the television homes of the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves, joining KITN-TV (channel 29, now WFTC) and effectively replacing KSTP-TV with seven to eight games a year of a 25-game broadcast TV package. This was the first time since carrying the Twins as an independent station that channel 11 had broadcast local professional sports.^[149][150] Beginning in 1994, KLGT replaced KITN-TV in the arrangement.^[151] By the 2000–01 season, KARE had 15 games and channel 23, by then known as KMWB, had 20. The team moved its broadcast games to WFTC ahead of the 2001–02 season.^[152]

In the early 1990s, two of the original team of anchors that made KARE a competitor in the 1980s left. The more acrimonious departure was that of sportscaster Tom Ryther, who was forced out in 1991 after suing the station for age discrimination. Ryther alleged that his job duties had been progressively reduced in order to bring younger faces—such as his replacement, Jeff Passolt—on screen.^[153] KARE defended itself by pointing to research from 1990 that it conducted on local TV personalities.^[154] Ryther's lawsuit was successful; a jury issued a $715,000 judgment in his favor in 1993.^[155] KARE appealed, but a federal appeals court upheld the verdict in 1996,^[154] and the Supreme Court rejected KARE's final appeal in 1997.^[156] In 1994, Douglas departed KARE in search of a job closer to family in the eastern U.S.^[157] He was replaced by weekend meteorologist Ken Barlow on the weeknight newscasts.^[158]

The 1990s were a decade of strength for KARE news. The station continued its domination of viewers 25–54 while narrowly trailing or narrowly leading WCCO-TV in total ratings in late news, though channel 4 had more total viewers for its early evening newscasts.^{[159][160][161]} During the decade, KARE added Saturday morning newscasts, in 1992.^[162]

KARE aired the locally produced game show Let's Bowl for several years in the late 1990s; it ran after Saturday Night Live. The audience support for the program was sufficient to help its creators, Tim Scott and Rick Kronfeld, secure a pickup for their show from the Comedy Central cable channel.^[163]