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KARE (channel 11) is a television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, serving the Twin Cities area as an NBC affiliate. Owned by Tegna Inc., the station maintains studios on Olson Memorial Highway ( MN 55) in Golden Valley and a transmitter at the Telefarm site in Shoreview, Minnesota. However, master control and some internal operations are based at the studios of sister station and fellow NBC affiliate WCNC-TV in Charlotte, North Carolina.

History

Early years

Channel 11 signed on the air in 1953 with its broadcast hours split between WTCN-TV in Minneapolis and WMIN-TV in St. Paul; the WTCN-TV callsign was originally used by the Minneapolis-licensed channel 4 from that station's sign-on in 1949 to 1952; channel 4 changed to WCCO-TV when, in August 1952, Twin Cities Newspapers (a partnership between the ''Minneapolis Tribune'' and the '' Saint Paul Pioneer Press-Dispatch'') divested its broadcast properties. The television station was sold to a new company, Midwest Radio and Television, which was created for the purchase, with CBS as a minority partner. CBS at the time owned WCCO radio; with the purchase of the TV station, channel 4's calls were unified with the radio station. Meanwhile, the Twin Cities Newspapers radio properties, WTCN (1280 AM) and WTCN-FM (97.1, now KTCZ-FM), were sold to the Minnesota Television Service Corporation headed by Saint Paul businessman Robert Butler, a former ambassador to Cuba and Australia. Soon afterward, Butler's group and the owner of WMIN radio submitted separate applications for the new channel 11 construction permit. Because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had a backlog of contested licenses, the two parties submitted a joint application to share the allocation in hopes of expediting its processing and approval.

The FCC approved this deal and WTCN-TV/WMIN-TV went on the air on September 1, 1953, as an ABC affiliate. The station also carried a secondary affiliation with DuMont. During the late 1950s, the station also was briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network. Under the agreement, the stations shared a transmitter mounted atop the Foshay Tower in downtown Minneapolis, alternating use every two hours. WTCN-TV's studios were in the Calhoun Beach Hotel in Minneapolis near Lake Calhoun, while WMIN-TV was based in the Hamm Building in downtown Saint Paul. On April 3, 1955, with FCC approval, WMIN sold its share of channel 11 and WTCN-TV became the sole owner of the frequency. On the same day, the WTCN stations were sold to the Bitner Group. Two years later, the Bitner group merged with Time-Life.

The early draw of WTCN-TV was its children's programs that featured characters like J. P. Patches, Skipper Daryl, Captain 11 (originally played by Jim Lange), Sergeant Scotty, Wrangler Steve ( Steve Cannon, who would later become one of WCCO radio's biggest draws) and the most popular of all, Casey Jones, a train engineer played by Roger Awsumb and accompanied by his sidekick, Joe the Cook (Chris Wedes), succeeded by Roundhouse Rodney (Lynn Dwyer). The ''Lunch With Casey'' show originated on WMIN-TV and was on the channel 11 schedule from 1954 until 1972.

On April 16, 1961, KMSP-TV (channel 9) took the ABC affiliation and WTCN-TV became an independent station. As a traditional general entertainment station, channel 11 offered cartoons, sitcoms, old movies, Minnesota Twins baseball, locally produced shows, news and drama series. It was also home to the Twin Cities' first prime-time newscast, with its 10:00 p.m. newscast moving to 9:00 p.m. Chris-Craft Industries bought WTCN-TV in 1964; WTCN radio was sold later that year by Time-Life to Buckley Broadcasting and became WWTC. Under Chris-Craft, channel 11 modernized its newscasts; up to that time, they were still shot on film.

Metromedia enters the picture

Metromedia announced its purchase of WTCN-TV from Chris-Craft in July 1971. Upon taking control of the station's operations in June 1972 Metromedia made channel 11 its fourth independent outlet, falling in line with the company's stations in New York City, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. The new owners announced plans to upgrade channel 11's lineup of acquired programming (among the new shows added by Metromedia were '' The Merv Griffin Show'' in prime time and ''Wonderama'' on Sunday mornings) as well as make an investment in news and public affairs. WTCN-TV also began using a new tower at the Telefarm site in Shoreview, Minnesota; the new transmitter increased the station's broadcasting range significantly, boosting its secondary coverage to . In 1973, after 20 years at the Calhoun Beach Hotel, WTCN-TV moved to its current studio in Golden Valley. The address of the building was originally 441 Boone Avenue North, but is now known as 8811 Highway 55 (55427-4762)—the 11 corresponding to the station's then-analog and now virtual channel number.

The switch to NBC and Gannett takes over

In the mid-1970s, ABC—then enjoying its first run as America's top-rated television network—began looking for stronger affiliates across the country, and largely did so at the expense of third-place NBC. ABC surprised the industry in August 1978 by announcing it had signed an affiliation deal with KSTP-TV (channel 5), ending that station's 30-year relationship with NBC. NBC then chose to affiliate with WTCN-TV after rejecting an offer from former ABC affiliate KMSP-TV. The three-way switch occurred on March 5, 1979, making WTCN-TV Metromedia's first (and only) station affiliated with the NBC network.

As part of its new network affiliation status, Metromedia promised further upgrades to WTCN-TV's programming as well as a major investment in the news department. Channel 11's schedule in its first few weeks as an NBC outlet was a hodgepodge of network programs and syndicated fare the station was still obligated to run, such as ''Spider-Man'', '' Tom and Jerry'', ''I Love Lucy'', '' The Mary Tyler Moore Show'', and '' The PTL Club''; Metromedia also recently acquired for WTCN-TV the Twin Cities' rights to '' Happy Days'', ''M*A*S*H'', and '' The Waltons''.

NBC continued to struggle early in the 1980s (including the loss of the 1980 Summer Olympics to the American boycott, which resulted in the network scaling back its coverage), and channel 11 was no exception. The station quickly fell back to fourth place in the ratings–behind even KMSP-TV, which replaced WTCN-TV as the Twin Cities' largest independent station and one of the most prominent in the upper Midwest, and suggesting at the time that NBC completely backfired on refusing to affiliate with KMSP-TV. Metromedia would later sell about half of WTCN's cartoons and syndicated programming inventory to KMSP-TV. The station's newscasts were an even bigger concern as they drew single-digit audience shares, far behind both WCCO-TV and KSTP-TV, and utilized an underwhelming version of NBC's ''NewsCenter'' format. By coincidence, Chris-Craft would take a majority stake in KMSP-TV's parent company, United Television in 1981, pitting WTCN-TV against its former owners.

In August 1982, having grown tired of the sustained losses, Metromedia announced it was selling channel 11 to the then- Rochester, New York–based Gannett Company

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