KARE (TV)

This article is about the television station formerly known as WUSA. For the sister station in Washington, D.C., that currently uses this call sign, see WUSA (TV).
This article is about the television station formerly known as WTCN-TV. For the station in West Palm Beach, Florida, that currently uses this call sign, see WTCN-CD. For the area station that originally used this call sign, see WCCO-TV.

KARE
CityMinneapolis, Minnesota
Channels
BrandingKARE 11 (pronounced "care")
Programming
Affiliations
Ownership
Owner
History
First air date
September 1, 1953
(71 years ago) (1953-09-01)
Former call signs
  • WTCN-TV (1953–1985)
  • WMIN-TV (shared operation, 1953–1955)
  • WUSA (1985–1986)
Former channel number(s)
  • Analog: 11 (VHF, 1953–2009)
  • Digital: 35 (UHF, 1999–2009), 11 (VHF, 2009–2021)
Call sign meaning
Sounds like "care"
Technical information[1]
Licensing authority
FCC
Facility ID23079
ERP1,000 kW[2]
HAAT455.9 m (1,496 ft)[2]
Transmitter coordinates45°3′45″N 93°8′22″W / 45.06250°N 93.13944°W / 45.06250; -93.13944
Translator(s)see § Translators
Links
Public license information
Websitewww.kare11.com

KARE (channel 11) is a television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, serving as the Twin Cities area's 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.

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, ABC announced it would move its Twin Cities affiliation to KSTP-TV. 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.

  1. ^ "Facility Technical Data for KARE". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
  2. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference karetouhf was invoked but never defined (see the help page).