KARE

'KARE', channel 11, is an NBC-affiliated television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul area (commonly known as the Twin Cities) of Minnesota and portions of western Wisconsin. KARE is owned by the Gannett Company, with studios located in Golden Valley, Minnesota.
The station is noted for having a number of Emmy-winning photojournalists and has had a highly-rated newscast for over two decades. The station broadcasts on VHF channel 11 and digitally on UHF channel 35 (through virtual channel numbering, it appears as channel 11-1). It operates KARE 11 WeatherPlus on its DT2 feed.

Contents

History

Past logos

Programming

Current anchors

Weather

Sports

Reporters

Former anchors and personalities

Broadcasting facilities

References

External links

History

KARE was first known as 'WTCN-TV' (the “TCN” stood for “Twin Cities Newspapers”), though it was not the first TV station in the Twin Cities to carry that name. Channel 4 originally carried the WTCN name, but it was changed to WCCO-TV following the station's merger with the WCCO radio stations in 1952. At that time, WTCN-AM (1280 AM, now WWTC) was sold to the Minnesota Television Service Corporation headed by St. Paul businessman Robert Butler, a former ambassador to Cuba and Australia.
Soon afterward, Butler's group applied for the channel 11 license. At the same time, WMIN (1400 AM, now KMNV) had also applied for channel 11. Since the FCC had a backlog of contested licenses, the two stations worked out an agreement for a joint application. 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.
Under the agreement, each station would use a transmitter mounted atop the Foshay Tower in downtown Minneapolis for two hours, then allow the other channel to take over for the next two. WTCN-TV broadcast from the Calhoun Beach Hotel in Minneapolis, while WMIN broadcast from the Hamm Building in St. Paul. On April 3 1955, with FCC approval, WMIN sold its share of channel 11, and WTCN-TV took over the frequency full-time. On the same day, the WTCN stations were sold to the Bitner Group. Just two years later, the Bitner group merged with Time-Life.
In 1961, KMSP-TV took the ABC affiliation, and WTCN became an independent, with its 10 pm newscast moving to 9 pm. As a traditional general entertainment independent station, WTCN offered cartoons, sitcoms, old movies, Minnesota Twins baseball, locally produced shows, news, and dramas. It was also been home to the Twin Cities first primetime newscast.
Chris-Craft Industries bought the WTCN stations in 1964, but sold off WTCN-AM. Under Chris-Craft, WTCN modernized its newscasts. Up to that time, they were still shot on film.
Metromedia bought WTCN-TV in 1971. A year later, the station built a new tower in the Telefarm installation in Shoreview, Minnesota in 1972. Additionally, the new transmitter greatly increased the station's reception area, boosting its secondary coverage to 72 miles. In 1973, after 20 years at the Calhoun Beach Hotel, WTCN moved to its current studio in Golden Valley.
In the late 70s, ABC began looking for stronger affiliates across the country--including Minneapolis-St.Paul. The network had talks with WTCN, WCCO-TV (CBS), and KSTP-TV (NBC). KSTP surprised the industry in August 1978 by announcing its split with NBC, ending a five-decade relationship in radio and TV. Channel 5 would become an ABC affiliate on March 5, 1979 -- the network's biggest coup at that time. The Peacock Network then chose to affiliate with WTCN. Metromedia sold about half of its cartoons and syndicated programming to former ABC affiliate KMSP-TV, which became the Twin Cities' largest independent station.
In 1983, Metromedia sold WTCN to Gannett. In order to update and strengthen the station's image, Gannett changed the call letters to 'WUSA' in 1985. But, after the corporation purchased WDVM-TV in Washington, D.C., it felt that the WUSA identification was a better fit for the nation's capitol. Gannett needed to start over, and chose 'KARE' as the new call letters for the station.
Gannett also made a significant investment into the station's news department. The popular anchor team of Paul Magers and Diana Pierce were hired in September 1983. The pair would lead the station's 10:00 p.m. newscasts for 20 years--a co-anchor record in Twin Cities television. KARE-11's outdoor "Backyard" weather studio was also launched in 1983, coinciding with the arrival of fresh-faced meteorologist Paul Douglas.
Magers and Douglas had great on-air chemistry. Along with Pierce, they helped lift KARE to the top spot in the Twin Cities news ratings in 1986, displacing WCCO-TV, Channel 4. KSTP-TV, Channel 5, which had itself been dethroned by WCCO-TV earlier in the 80s, was pushed back to third place--a spot in which it remains today. In 1987, KARE turned up the heat on its rivals one more notch, with the surprise hiring of Pat Miles, main co-anchor from WCCO-TV.
Since the departure of Paul Magers in December 2003, KARE lost some of its lustre, but continues to win the key demographic ratings desired by advertisers. KARE has won the NPPA's award for station of the year in 1985, 1995, 2001 and 2006.
On April 27, 2006, KARE became the first station in the Twin Cities (and among the first in the US) to broadcast news in High Definition Television. As part of this transition, the station completely replaced its news set, originally built in 1986 and updated in the 1990s, with a new state-of-the-art backdrop. At the current time, the station is still broadcasting in analog (with the news shot in a way that is still usable on the smaller 4:3 format of analog sets).[2]

Past logos

Programming

A locally-produced children's program, ''Lunch with Casey'', is remembered as being one of the unique contributions of the station. The show, featuring Roger Awsumb as Casey Jones, ran from 1954 until the end of 1972, with a brief reappearance in 1974. Sidekicks on the show included Joe the Cook, played by Chris Wedes, and Roundhouse Rodney, played by Lynn Dwyer. Wedes went on to play the clown J.P. Patches in Seattle, Washington, credited as partial inspiration (along with Portland, Oregon's Rusty Nails) for Krusty the Clown on ''The Simpsons''.
KARE has dominated the local TV news market since the mid-1980s. The station experimented with a 40-minute newscast at 10 p.m., before 35-minute nightly newscasts—now the standard—became common (being in the Central Time Zone, Minnesota stations generally broadcast news at 5, 6, and 10 p.m.). The 10:00 p.m. newscast features a ''"KARE 11 News Extra"'', an extended news story. A special sports show is put together periodically, and the station also broadcasts a group of morning shows each weekday. On April 27, 2006, KARE began to produce evening news broadcasts in HDTV.
The station made weather history on July 18, 1986 when helicopter pilot Max Messmer was flying out to cover a news story and noticed a funnel cloud forming over the Springbrook Nature Center in Fridley. Photojournalist Tom Empey was on board the chopper and shot amazing and unprecedented video of the twister. The images were broadcast live. The funnel soon formed into a full-fledged tornado as it touched the ground, and KARE broadcasted images of the funnel for 30 minutes. In the years to come, this first aerial video of a tornado was heavily studied by meteorologists, and contributed significantly to what is known about tornado formation. It was moderate in intensity, with winds of 113-157 mph, and caused $650,000 damage.
The short-lived game show ''Let's Bowl'' (filmed in the Twin Cities) had some episodes air on the channel in the late '90s before it was remade for Comedy Central. In January 2005, a local cable access program began airing. Called ''The Show to Be Named Later...'', it is described as "The first (and only) sports talk, comedy, and variety show", somewhat of a cross between ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'' and Fox Sports Network's ''The Best Damn Sports Show Period''. A weekly show for teenagers called ''The Whatever Show'' (or simply ''Whatever'') and an outdoors program known as ''Minnesota Bound'' have both aired on the channel for about a decade. Former Minnesota Twin Kent Hrbek also has hosted his own outdoors show "Kent Hrbek Outdoors" on the channel since 2004.
For decades, both ''Jeopardy!'' and ''Wheel of Fortune'' aired on rival station WCCO-TV. But, in the early 2000s, ''Jeopardy!'' moved to KARE.

Current anchors

★ Diana Pierce (4 pm KARE OnLIVE co-host, 5 pm anchor)

★ Julie Nelson (6 & 10 pm weekdays)

★ Mike Pomeranz (5, 6 &10 pm weekdays)

★ Pat Evans (4 pm KARE OnLIVE co-host/weather)

★ Amy Hockert (weekend evenings)

★ Kim Insley (weekday morning anchor)

★ Rick Kupchella (weekend evenings)

★ Tim McNiff (weekday morning anchor)

Weather

★ Belinda Jensen (Chief Meteorologist & Saturday morning co-host)

★ Jo Bender

★ Don Moldenhauer (Executive Weather Producer)

★ Sven Sundgaard (Friday-Sunday evenings)

★ Jonathan Yuhas (weekday mornings)

Sports

★ Randy Shaver (Sports Director, 6pm & 10 pm)

★ Eric Perkins (Weekend Sports Anchor/reporter/Saturday AM co-host)

★ Dave Schwartz (sports reporter)

Reporters

★

★ Pete Busch (Traffic Reporter)

★ Cindy Chapman (KARE OnLIVE Executive Producer)

★ Al Costantini

★ John Croman (Capital/General Assignment Reporter)

★ Jeffrey DeMars (KARE OnLIVE Backpack Journalist)

★ Joe Fryer

★ Scott Goldberg

★ Karla Hult

★ Boyd Huppert

★ Janel Klein

★ Jeff Olsen (KARE OnLIVE reporter)

★ Julianna Olsen

★ Rena Sarigianopoulos (morning reporter/anchor)

★ Ron Schara ''Minnesota Bound'' host

★ Scott Seroka

★ Jana Shortal

★ Renee Tessman (General Assignment & Health reporter)

★ Greg Vandegrift

★ Trisha Volpe

Former anchors and personalities

★ John Bachman (anchor/reporter)

★ Ken Barlow (Weekday Morning Meteorologist, 1989-1994; Chief Meteorologist, 1994-2005)

★ Roxane Battle (reporter/anchor/"Today" host)

★ Asha Blake (reporter/anchor)

★ Liz "Ibby" Carothers-Weekday Morning Meteorologist (1996-1997)

★ Steve Carroll (Sports Reporter, 1981-1986)

★ Mark Daly

★ Paul Douglas (Chief Meteorologist, 1983-1994)

★ Dennis Feltgen (Weekend Meteorologist, 1986-1989)

★ Charles Gonzalez (Sports Reporter 2004-2007)

★ Bernie Grace (crime reporter 1979-2006)

★ Mike Igoe ("Action 11" reporter from 1983-1989)

★ Rondah Kinchlow (education/general assignment reporter)

★ Kirsten Lindquist (Early Evening Anchor, 1983-1987)

★ Paul Magers (Main Anchor 1983-2003) Now with KCBS-TV In Los Angeles

★ Pat Miles (Early Evening Anchor, 1988-2001--hired in 1987, non-compete clause with WCCO)

★ Eric Olson (reporter/anchor 1985-1997)

★ Jeff Passolt (Weekend Sports, 1981-1991; Sports Director, 1991-1994)

★ Amy Powell (''Sunrise'' anchor/reporter)

★ Tom Ryther (Sports Director, 1981-1991)

★ Dale Schornack (anchor/reporter in the '80s)

★ Ken Speake (Reporter, 1980-2007)

★ Joan Steffend (Weekend Anchor, 1982-1993; 1994-1995)

★ Kathy Vara (previous ''Sunrise'' and ''Today'' anchor)

★ Frank Vascellaro (Morning Anchor 1996-December 2003; Weeknight Anchor, 2003-2005)

Broadcasting facilities

In addition to the main transmitters in Shoreview, KARE uses a network of broadcast translators to carry its analog signal to outlying parts of the state:

★ 'K56BZ' 56 Appleton ★ 'K18DG' 18 Alexandria ★ 'KLKS-LP' 14 Breezy Point ★ 'K14KD' 14 Frost ★ 'K53EV' 53 Jackson ★ 'K53AO' 53 Olivia

★ 'K68BJ' 68 Redwood Falls ★ 'K52AB' 52 St. James ★ 'K67BZ' 67 Walker ★ 'K39FE' 39 Willmar ★ 'K62AI' 62 Windom

References

★ kare11.com: History of KARE-11

★ Northpine.com: Minnesota TV Translators and Satellite Stations

External links

★ KARE homepage

★ KARE 11 at Twin Cities TV Source

★ KARE OnLIVE homepage

★ ''Lunch with Casey Jones''

★ ''Minnesota Bound''

★ ''The Show to Be Named Later...''

★ ''Station of the Year''

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