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WUCW (channel 23) is a television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, serving the Twin Cities area as an affiliate of The CW. Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station maintains studios in the Pence Building on 8th Street and Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis, and its transmitter is located at the Telefarm site in Shoreview.

Channel 23 was established as KTMA in 1982, airing a mix of commercial and subscription television programming; three years later, it became a full-time independent station. During this period, it became famous for originating the cult cable television series ''Mystery Science Theater 3000'', which began as a locally produced program. After going into bankruptcy in 1989, channel 23 was bought and repositioned as a family-oriented station, KLGT, which affiliated with The WB upon its 1995 launch. Sinclair purchased channel 23 in 1998 and changed the call letters to KMWB; it became WUCW upon the merger of The WB and UPN in 2006.

History

The subscription television years

On April 16, 1966, Viking Television, Inc., a company organized by South St. Paul attorney and judge Irving W. Beaudoin, filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to build a new television station on channel 23 in Minneapolis. It was designated for hearing alongside a competing application from the Calvary Temple Evangelistic Association in late 1968; the church pulled out of the proceedings, and the Viking application was granted on November 24, 1969.

Little progress was made toward the construction of the station, which took the call letters KTMA-TV. In 1972, Viking presented a proposal for a studio and transmitter complex in Shoreview. However, residents feared the erection of a fourth mast in town after the collapse of a tower under construction killed seven workers the year before, and Ramsey County acquired the land for a park and nature center, creating a potential conflict of land uses. The loss of the site would further set back construction.

The prospect of subscription television had been thought of as early as the 1969 grant, when Viking held the local franchise to use the Phonevision system. However, a new generation of STV interests emerged in the mid-1970s. Viking signed a contract with American Subscription Television ( SelecTV) and filed for subscription television authorization in October 1975.

Viking was still mired in tower site problems in 1976, when a second group filed to propose a subscription television station in the Twin Cities: Buford Television of Tyler, Texas, which applied for channel 29, only for a second application from Faith Broadcasting Network to compete against it. Meanwhile, Viking filed in March 1978 to sell the construction permit to Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation; Metropolitan was in turn 20 percent owned by Universal Subscription Television, a subsidiary of Canadian media company CanWest Capital Corporation. This application was dismissed on June 22, 1979.

Viking had objected to Buford's channel 29 application when it was filed, but in February 1980, Beaudoin sold 80 percent of the KTMA construction permit to Buford for $475,000 in construction costs, which in turn cleared the way for Faith Broadcasting Network to build channel 29. However, tower siting woes continued to snarl channel 23's attempts to get on air. The FCC in the late 1960s had required that the VHF television stations give room to new UHF stations that wished to broadcast from Shoreview, and KMSP-TV's mast was supposed to accommodate channel 23 and channel 29. However, when KSTP-TV obtained permission for a height extension to its tower (which also held WCCO-TV), only the KMSP tower was left out because it could not be extended with the UHF stations on it. This prompted KMSP-TV to rescind the agreement, resulting in legal action.

It was only the resolution of the tower site issue that got the ball rolling for KTMA. More than 16 years after the permit was granted, channel 23 began broadcasting on September 22, 1982. In addition to advertiser-supported programs, KTMA carried Spectrum, the subscription service owned by Buford's Home Entertainment Network (HEN) division. The new service quickly secured valuable programming when it struck a deal to televise Minnesota Twins baseball and Minnesota North Stars hockey home games: the entire North Stars home slate and 50 Twins home games, packaged as "Spectrum Sports"—available for $19.95 a month or $29.90 along with the Spectrum movie service. The same year Buford launched KTMA, it sold a majority stake in HEN to United Cable.

At its peak, in May 1983, the service attracted 27,000 Twin Cities subscribers, making it the most successful of United Cable's three STV operations. Even then, United Cable was laying off 55 staff, cutting costs, and considering outsourcing its movie programming to Oak Industries (owners of ON TV). That summer, United agreed to buy Buford's 80 percent ownership of KTMA for $7.5 million while also writing down the Home Entertainment Network division and putting the three STV systems on the market.

As a sports service, Spectrum in the Twin Cities never reached the intended subscriber figures, prompting profits to fall far short of expectations for the Twins. Further, a federal judge had ruled against the Twins and North Stars pooling their broadcast rights in the Spectrum deal after WCCO-TV sued on antitrust charges. (Sports telecasts continued while the case was being appealed; after Spectrum's demise, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit found in the teams' favor.) In August 1985, the Twins and North Stars opted not to renew their Spectrum rights deal, a decision that sounded the death knell for the service, already down to just 13,000 subscribers. The movie service ended September 29, 1985, while Spectrum Sports concluded with the final game of the Twins season on October 6.

Independent KTMA

KTMA, still on the market when Spectrum closed, adopted a format of music videos programmed by local radio station KTWN. K-Twin Communications, owner of KTWN, made an $11 million offer to United Cable to purchase channel 23 outright. United rejected the bid and was reported to have accepted a $12 million offer from an Atlanta-based group. In the end, KTMA-TV Acquisition Corporation, owned by general manager Donald H. O'Connor, bought the entirety of the station—including Beaudoin's stake—for $13.8 million. O'Connor purchased another $2.5 million in equipment and changed KTMA to a more traditional general entertainment station, acquiring a number of older syndicated programs such as ''The Andy Griffith Show'' and ''Laurel and Hardy''. A late 1986 billboard campaign centered around '' Elvira's Movie Macabre'' ended prematurely after the station received a dozen complaints over the slogan "features that will scare you to death". The majority of complaints over the billboard came from Farmington, where their city council also lodged a complaint to KTMA. One programming tradition began on New Year's Eve 1986: ''TV23's 23rd Annual New Year's Eve Extravaganza'', a live comedy special emceed by station stagehand Kevin Murphy as "Bob Bagadonuts" culminating with a melon drop at midnight from the station's rooftop; this special was revisited in 1987, 1988 and 1989.

Despite a major $1.2 million marketing campaign at the relaunch, after the station was acquired, the station was only moderately successful at attracting viewers and revenue from commercial advertising. By February 1988, KTMA's ratings were still only half that of KITN-TV, which had become the Twin Cities area's other major UHF independent. The first signs of financial trouble also occurred that year: KTMA had to temporarily stop carrying some programs in August because it needed to refinance to pay its syndicators in a timely fashion. That same year, attempts were made at creating locally produced shows: to fill a hole in the Saturday night line-up, the station created ''Saturday Night at Ringside'', a multi-hour block of professional wrestling programming hosted by Mick Karch, and a late-night talk show, ''Sports Week with Stretch and Z'', also was created.

Late 1988 brought two debuts, one ambitious and one low-key. On December 14, 1988, O'Connor announced the formation of the Minnesota Independent Network, which would unite KTMA with KXLI channel 41 in St. Cloud and KXLT-TV channel 47 in Rochester; low-power TV stations owned by Red River TV in Bemidji (K26AC), Brainerd, and Grand Rapids; and several additional low-power stations to be leased or built at Alexandria, Donnelly/Herman, Park Rapids, and Austin. The St. Cloud station was also slated under the proposal to move its tower northwest toward Sauk Centre and change to channel 19. The Minnesota Independent Network would give KTMA and KXLI the regional circulation necessary to compete with other Twin Cities-market stations for viewers and programming rights. Further, KTMA would become KMIN.

The other debut came with less bombast but cemented KTMA's place in popular culture. As production manager Jim Mallon sought to fill a gap in the Sunday night line-up, he talked to his contacts in the local comedy community and ended up meeting Joel Hodgson, who had a warehouse in the same building as office space Mallon was using at the time. After a successful lunch meeting with Mallon to produce a new locally produced program for KTMA, Hodgson created ''Mystery Science Theater 3000'' (also known under the abbreviated title ''MST3K''), which began in November 1988. The show quickly attracted the involvement of Kevin Murphy, who had been an associate of Mallon dating back to his horror film project ''Blood Hook'', performing multiple tasks from camera operator to show writer to set builder. Hodgson recruited local comedians Josh Weinstein and Trace Beaulieu

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