KARE (TV)

KARE(channel 11) is atelevision stationlicensed toMinneapolis, Minnesota, United States, serving as theNBCaffiliate for theTwin Citiesarea. Owned byTegna Inc., the station maintains studios on Olson Memorial Highway (MN 55) inGolden Valleyand a transmitter at theTelefarmsite inShoreview, Minnesota.
Channel 11 began broadcasting on September 1, 1953. It was originally shared by WMIN-TV inSt. Pauland WTCN-TV in Minneapolis; the two stations shared an affiliation withABCand alternated presenting local programs. In 1955, Consolidated Television and Radio bought both stations and merged them as WTCN-TV from the Minneapolis studios in theCalhoun 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 toKMSP-TV(channel 9), leaving channel 11 to become anindependent stationthat broadcast games of theMinnesota Twinsbaseball team, movies, and syndicated programs. This continued under two successive owners:Chris-Craft IndustriesandMetromedia. By the late 1970s, WTCN was one of the nation's most financially successful independent stations.
In 1978, NBC's Twin Cities affiliate,KSTP-TV, announced it would switch its affiliation to ABC. 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 broadcastingNewsCenter 11newscasts. 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 leadersWCCO-TVand KSTP-TV.
Metromedia agreed to buy Chicago independent stationWFLDin 1982 and sold WTCN toGannettto 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 toits Washington, D.C., station.More recently, as of 2022, the station has been a second-place finisher in local news.
TheWMINBroadcasting Company ofSt. Paulapplied in February 1948 for a new station licensed to that city on channel 2.The application was frozen when theFederal Communications Commission(FCC) halted all grants of new TV stations in 1948.
In February 1952—two months before the FCC lifted the freeze—the Minnesota Television Public Service Corporation, a company headed by former ambassadorRobert Butlerand headquartered in St. Paul, filed for television channel 11 in Minneapolis.Weeks later, Mid Continent Radio Television, which owned station WTCN-TV on channel 4 as well asWTCN (1280 AM), announced it would take overWCCO radio, combine its operations with channel 4, and divest WTCN radio.Minnesota Television Public Service then acquired WTCN radio, which had to be sold to allow Mid Continent to purchase WCCO.The transactions were approved in August 1952, at which time channel 4 changed from WTCN-TV toWCCO-TV.
After the freeze was lifted, WMIN refiled its pre-freeze application in July to specify channel 11,as channel 2 had been set aside for educational broadcasting by the FCC.Later that month,Meredith Publishingfiled for channel 11 in Minneapolis alongside stations inRochester, New York, andSt. Louis.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.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 lengthycomparative hearing—proposed to share time on channel 11, which the FCC accepted in April 1953.
On September 1, 1953, channel 11 began broadcasting. At 2 p.m., the first WMIN-TV programs aired: a news show, the women's programTalk About the Town, and a movie. Two hours later, WTCN-TV greeted viewers with a dedication, the cooking showMan Around the House, and a teen music bandstand program,Corner Drug.Channel 11's signal originated from theFoshay Towerin downtown Minneapolis;the tower had a master antenna inspired by theEmpire State Buildingin 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.
The transmitter and antenna were the only physical facilities shared by the stations. While WMIN-TV and WTCN-TV were affiliates ofABC, in keeping with WTCN radio,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 theHamm Buildingin St. Paul, the radio station having relocated to its transmitter site;it had no film developing equipment, so films had to be airmailed to and from sister stationKELO-TVinSioux Falls, South Dakota.WTCN-TV established itself in theCalhoun Beach Hotelin 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.
Each station offered its own local programs. WMIN had the children's showCaptain 11, featuring hostJim Langein a space-themed outfit.It also featured Wrangler Steve, a host of Westerns played by WMIN radio disc jockeySteve Cannon.For kids, WTCN had the clownJ. P. Patches, originally played by Daryl Laub and then by Chris Wedes.Wedes left for the newKIRO-TVinSeattlein 1958;Patchesaired on the Seattle station until 1981.For 19 years,Roger AwsumbplayedCasey Joneson WTCN'sLunch with Casey.
By 1954, channel 11 was offering some programming from theDuMont Television Network,though the network's shows moved to new stationKEYD-TV(channel 9) when it launched in January 1955.
In January 1955, Consolidated Television and Radio Broadcasters ofIndianapolis, 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.It announced that it would keep the WTCN call letters.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.During this time, the station affiliated with theNTA Film Network, which began in 1956.
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, WFBMradioandtelevisionin Indianapolis, and WLAVradioandtelevisioninGrand Rapids, Michigan—toTime, Inc.in December 1956. The $15.75 million deal came after theCrowell-Collier Publishing Companybacked out of a transaction for the stations plusWFDFinFlint, Michigan.FCC approval followed in April 1957.Time improved station revenues by expanding its movie library and sharpening its promotion of feature films.It offered a large schedule of local sports, including select games ofMinneapolis Millersminor 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 ofMinnesota Golden Gophers football.
By the start of the 1960s, Time's relationship with ABC had become strained.Varietyreported in March 1960 that station management was insisting on a protection clause, a guarantee that ABC would not go toKMSP-TV(channel 9), anindependent stationthen owned by20th Century Fox.KMSP was already carrying some ABC shows that were not seen on channel 11's schedule.Channel 11's fears were well-founded; in January 1961, ABC announced it would move its programs to KMSP effective April 16.
The newly independent channel 11 became the market's first station to telecast major league baseball with the newly relocatedMinnesota 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 andRay Scottas announcers.The Twins, movies, and feature programs became the station's top program draws,as well as newscasts timed to air just before the network affiliates, including hourly news breaks and a 9 p.m. newscast.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.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.
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 withHamm'sbeer 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, includingMankatoandRochester, Minnesota, andEau ClaireandLa 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.
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,Varietyreported thatChicago-basedWGN Inc.was considering buying WTCN-TV from Time;other buyers looked at and passed on the station at this time.A Twin Cities–based consortium agreed to pay $2 million for the WTCN stations in 1963 but failed to come up with the money.Chris-Craft Industriesagreed 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,KCOPin Los Angeles andKPTVinPortland, Oregon.WTCN radio was sold separately to the Buckley-Jaeger Companyand became WWTC that October.
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 and6+1⁄2hours a day of weekday shows promoted as "Kidville 11".The company stated in its 1965 annual report that WTCN-TV's performance "exceeded expectations".By 1966, the Twins games were being fed by WTCN-TV to a network of 15 television stations,which grew to 16 with the inclusion ofWVTVinMilwaukeethe next year;the Twins were joined on channel 11 in 1967 by the newMinnesota North Starshockey team.
In June 1971, WTCN-TV joined other local stations in moving its tower to theTelefarmsite inShoreview, Minnesota. The relocation to the newer, taller masts was necessitated because of the construction of theIDS Center, a Minneapolis skyscraper that shaded many viewers from the Foshay Tower site.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,killing seven workers.In lieu of the collapsed candelabra, Telefarm proposed constructing one tower for WTCN-TV and an FM station and another for WCCO and KSTP.The replacements were erected in late 1972.
Chris-Craft announced the sale of WTCN-TV toMetromediafor $18 million on July 29, 1971. Chris-Craft sold the station as part of its pursuit of a large-marketVHFtelevision station elsewhere.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 Caseyfinished 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;the team returned to channel 11 in 1975.Under Metromedia, WTCN-TV became one of the nation's most financially lucrative independent stations,even though it was less profitable than the network affiliates.
Metromedia's purchase of WTCN-TV included a parcel of land at the corner of Boone Avenue andMinnesota State Highway 55inGolden Valley, intended for the construction of new studios.Metromedia broke ground on a $5 million, 65,000-square-foot (6,000 m) 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.
While the network affiliates intensified their competition for the news audience, WTCN's small news effort—a 9:30 p.m. newscast known asTotal News—was not considered much of a factor in the market, although it was just behind KMSP-TV in total viewers.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.Gil Amundson doubled as the news director and anchor. WTCN had the only TV news team in the market without a professional meteorologist.TV Guideran a feature calling WTCN the real-life equivalent to WJM-TV, the Minneapolis station depicted onThe Mary Tyler Moore Show.
KMSP-TV, the Twin Cities' ABC affiliate, was a distant third in the news ratings race. Channel 9 was traditionally the most profitable station in the market, but under Donald Swartz, it was a lean operation with a reputation for penny-pinching.As early as 1974, KMSP was rumored to have made changes to its news operation to appease the network, which threatened to re-affiliate with WTCN,and further rumors of network dissatisfaction with KMSP's news effort surfaced in 1977.Channel 9's news budget was reportedly less than half that of WCCO-TV or KSTP-TV. In the late 1970s, as ABC soared to number one in the national ratings, the network began a campaign to upgrade its affiliate base and approached WCCO-TV, KSTP-TV, and WTCN-TV.KSTP-TV, the NBC affiliate and the market's news ratings leader, wished to expand its signal beyond the Twin Cities to take advantage of recently relaxed rules relating to the feeding of broadcast translators bymicrowave transmission,and there were fewer ABC affiliates in surrounding areas—notablyAlexandriaand Eau Claire—than NBC affiliates. On August 29, 1978, KSTP announced it would switch from NBC to ABC in March 1979, ending a 50-year relationship between KSTP and NBC dating to the days of radio.The size of the market and tenure of KSTP with NBC made the switch particularly stunning;KSTP's defection was seen as a coup, the largest engineered by the network.
Even before KSTP's affiliation switch was publicly announced, NBC reached out to Metromedia as it began to evaluate KMSP-TV and WTCN-TV for potential affiliation with the network.As part of the process, it reached out to former employees of KMSP-TV, at least one of whom told NBC that its management "didn't care about news" and that it was "a stepchild of their operation".At the end of September, NBC announced its decision: it would affiliate with WTCN-TV.The network picked channel 11 over channel 9 on the strength of its facilities and performance.
In reaching a deal, Metromedia promised NBC that it would launch a "first-class news operation" for the station, which was weak in the area of news (though better than many independents) and had a news staff totaling 10 people at the time.Most of the $4 million Metromedia spent ahead of the affiliation switch was invested in the news department, on new reporters, largely coming from TV stations in the South; a new news set; weather radar; andelectronic news gathering, replacing film.The only member of the news department who did not continue after the switch was weather anchor Toni Hughes, who had presented channel 11's weathercasts for a decade; she was dismissed because she was not a meteorologist. Though she was technically a freelancer, her duties for WTCN prevented her from simultaneously working for another station.
WTCN-TV became the Twin Cities' NBC affiliate on March 5, 1979. Ahead of the switch, the station launched a $1 million promotional campaign titled "We've Got It Now", featuring billboards of such NBC stars asJohnny Carson, a visit by network presidentFred Silvermanand other NBC stars, and the live broadcast ofTodayfrom Minneapolis.That same day,NewsCenter 11launched with weeknight news anchor Jim Dyer, meteorologistGlenn Burns, and sportscaster Bob Kurtz.
NewsCenter 11was a ratings and critical disaster. Neal Gendler in theMinneapolis Tribunewas 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."John Carman ofThe Minneapolis Starcalled 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 ofThe 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'sWNEW-TVin New York—and executives unfamiliar with the market.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.
In its first ratings survey, the station placed fourth out of three newscasts (and KMSP, airing entertainment shows) at 6 p.m.,enough to be described as "about as popular as the measles" by Vick inThe Star;its performance was so poor that the station, having pledged advertisers a certain level of viewership, had to offer costly makegood ads.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 watchThe 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.Meanwhile, freed of its network programming and having picked up the North Starsand Twinsrights, KMSP-TV became one of the nation's leading independents, beatingNewsCenter 11in the ratings just as WTCN had done when KMSP was an ABC affiliate.Kevin O'Brien, WTCN's general manager at the time, later toldThe Mercury Newsthat switching to NBC "tore that station asunder because we didn't have that much time to plan such a dramatic change".
While the news product improved under new news director Brink Chipman and as reporters settled into the market,turmoil engulfed the troubled newsroom. An investigative reporter was fired in July before her reports even appeared on air due to poor-quality work.Dyer, unhappy nearly from the start, was switched with weekend anchor Stan Bohrman in August and left in December.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 fromWKYC-TVinCleveland.Burns was the last of the original three news presenters to leave WTCN; in January 1982, he accepted a position withWSB-TVinAtlanta,where he would spend 40 years.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.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.One bright spot for the station was a 1982 series onherpesreported by anchor John Bachman,Herpes Is Forever, which won anAlfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award.
To increase revenue, which lagged behind other major-market network affiliates, Metromedia ceased airing the network'sThe Tomorrow Showin favor of sitcoms from which it earned all the advertising, doing the same with the occasional network movie.In early 1982, the station temporarily lost the ability to air theTonight 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 ontape delay, which WTCN did to air syndicated repeats ofM*A*S*H. WTCN defended its decision by citing Carson's older demographics at a time when his ratings were slipping nationally.When KMSP refused to airTonightfor the same reason, NBC was forced to acquiesce to WTCN's delay.Asked in 1981 by theBoston Herald Americanto appraise Metromedia's management of WTCN, M. Howard Gelfand of theMinneapolis Tribunenoted that "it has taken WTCN-TV ... just a couple of years to turn a silk purse into a sow's ear".
In August 1982, Metromedia agreed to buyWFLD, an independent station in Chicago. It needed to sell one TV station and a Chicago radio station to stay within ownership limits, but it chose to divest itself of a second TV station to raise the money necessary for the $136 million purchase—the second-highest for a single station—without incurring debt.First to be sold wasWXIX-TV, an independent station in Cincinnati,followed by WTCN-TV, acquired by theGannett Companyfor $75 million.Gannett, in turn, needed to sell one VHF television station to make room in its portfolioand choseKARK-TVinLittle Rock, Arkansas, for divestiture.
Gannett took control of WTCN in April 1983 and began implementing a top-to-bottom overhaul of the station's local news programming, promising to raise its quality to match WCCO and KSTP. A new station manager and vice president of news were brought in, both fromKBTV, Gannett's market-leading station inDenver, to replace the existing management which remained with Metromedia.Nearly immediately, the new management moved to distance the news product from its image under Metromedia, changing the name fromNewsCenter 11to11 News, similar to the9 Newstitle used by KBTV.Armed with research identifying WCCO and KSTP as having older-skewing viewership and seeing a void for a newscast for a younger audience,the station added as many as 40 new staff membersin addition to the 40 that it had at the time of purchase—compared to 100 apiece for the newsrooms at WCCO-TV and KSTP-TV.To keep pace with its competitors, the station acquired a news helicopter, as well as new cameras and vehicles.
Gannett filled the meteorologist position, left unfilled on a permanent basis since Burns's departure in January 1982, by hiringPaul Douglas, who had worked for theSatellite News Channel.The station cut a hole through the wall of its studio to create an outdoor weather set for Douglas's forecasts. It replaced the existing anchor pairing of John Bachman andCora-Ann MihalikwithPaul Magersand Diana Pierce, both hired in August from California stations.The station increased its emphasis on news photography; in addition to hiring anchors, it hired new news photographers.
The revamped newscasts debuted quietly in September 1983.Along with the new anchor team and set improvements, the newscasts were rebrandedNews 11, the second change in title in three months.Ratings did not improve immediately,but they began to rise slowly as early as November 1983.By November 1984, the station had increased its audience share at 10 p.m. to 15 percent, a significant increase from the previous year.The gap with second-place KSTP narrowed as the station increased its audience share to 23 percent by February 1986.
The FCC liberalized rules around call signs in late 1983.Gannett—the publisher ofUSA 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.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 theUSA Networkcable 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.
The WUSA call letters lasted less than one year in Minneapolis. Gannett acquired theEvening News Associationin February 1986; among its holdings wasWDVM, the CBS affiliate inWashington, D.C., near Gannett'scorporate headquartersin nearbyRosslyn, Virginia.From the moment Gannett took that station over, it mulled moving the WUSA call letters to Washington to provide a solid co-association withUSA Todayas well as Washington being the nation's capital.In March, John Carmody ofThe Washington Postreported that Gannett had instructed the Minneapolis station to come up with a new call sign.The station reached a deal witha radio stationinAtchison, Kansas, that had used the KARE call sign since 1949 to use "KARE" and switched to it on June 11.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".This freed its new sister station, channel 9 in Washington, to switch from WDVM to WUSA.
Channel 11's rising news fortunes continued after the call sign change to KARE, coinciding with a turnaround in ratings for the NBC network.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 inBrooklyn Park, eventually touching down inFridley. 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.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.
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.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.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.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.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.
KARE attracted criticism for its newscasts' style: trendy and designed to draw an emotional response. The latter was evident in its photojournalism style, which theStar Tribunelater called "highly visual and emotional"; KARE became a regular winner ofNational Press Photographers Associationawards.This prompted WCCO-TV, a station known for its hard news format, to become more image-conscious,and the other TV news outlets in the Twin Cities began incorporating longer, photojournalism-driven stories into their newscasts.KARE became the first Twin Cities station to offerclosed captioningof its local news in 1988.When the Minnesota Poll in 1988 found KARE's viewership concentrated among young adults, Noel Holston of theStar Tribunepredicted that the station could be dominant "for years to come" based on the age of its news watchers.
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 anon-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.Meanwhile, WCCO found renewed ratings strength and pushed KARE back to second.
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 titledBetween Friendsthat 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 Christianityand resurfaced in the market as the president and general manager of family-orientedKLGT.At KARE, she was replaced by Hank Price, who had managedWFMY-TVinGreensboro, North Carolina.In1992, KARE became one of the television homes of theNBA'sMinnesota Timberwolves, joining KITN-TV (channel 29, nowWFTC) 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.Beginning in 1994, KLGT replaced KITN-TV in the arrangement.By the2000–01 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 the2001–02 season.
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.KARE defended itself by pointing to research from 1990 that it conducted on local TV personalities.Ryther's lawsuit was successful; a jury issued a $715,000 judgment in his favor in 1993.KARE appealed, but a federal appeals court upheld the verdict in 1996,and the Supreme Court rejected KARE's final appeal in 1997.In 1994, Douglas departed KARE in search of a job closer to family in the eastern U.S.He was replaced by weekend meteorologistKen Barlowon the weeknight newscasts.
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.During the decade, KARE added Saturday morning newscasts, in 1992.
KARE aired the locally produced game showLet's Bowlfor several years in the late 1990s; it ran afterSaturday 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 theComedy Centralcable channel.
KARE launched a high-definition digital signal on channel 35 on August 31, 2001.KARE and WCCO on the Telefarm tower had intended to launch digital service as early as November 1999,but bad weather and high demand for tower crews stalled the project.
Magers—the anchor commonly credited with helping KARE remain number one in late evening news—left the station in 2003 to work forKCBS-TVin Los Angeles, ending the Magers–Pierce tandem that had become the longest-running anchor duo in the Twin Cities.Without Magers—and what competitorDon Shelbycalled his "magical formula"—on channel 11, interest heightened in the local stations' ratings performance.Frank Vascellaro, the man hired to replace Magers on the anchor desk, was the husband of WCCO evening news anchor Amelia Santaniello.Vascellaro's departure in 2005 coincided with that of Barlow, who was hired byWBZ-TVin Boston.In the wake of these departures and the replacement of Vascellaro byMike Pomeranzon the anchor desk,WCCO slowly crept closer to KARE and then took the lead in 2006, with a swing of three percent of the audience share to WCCO.When Pomeranz left to take a position with theSan Diego Padresin 2006, sports anchor Randy Shaver moved to the news desk.
The station experimented with several formats for its mid-morning program. In 2006, it replacedKARE 11 Todaywith a new program,Showcase Minnesota, that also featured advertiser-paid sponsored segments.It was replaced in 2011 with a revival ofKARE 11 Today; Pierce left her evening anchor duties to host the revamped show and KARE's 4 p.m. newscast.
The loss of ratings momentum continued in the early 2010s, as KARE slumped while WCCO locked up most of the number-one positions by demographic and time slot.A special month of newscasts by WCCO led that station to its first 25–54 win in late news since 1986.While, as of 2022, KARE has been competitive—particularly in the 25–54 demographic—WCCO has generally been the market leader in total viewers.Pierce retired in 2016 after taking a buyout package offered by Tegna,which became the new name for the former Gannett broadcast division when its TV stations and newspapers split into separate companies in 2015.
The KARE newsroom won multiple national journalism awards in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Three different investigative series together won theAlfred I. duPont–Columbia University Awardin 2017,followed by two awards in 2020 forOn the Veteran BeatandLove Them First.An investigation on prisons,Cruel and Unusual, won the duPont–Columbia in 2022,The next year, the station won another duPont–Columbia for a series on violent criminals titledThe Gap: Failure to Treat, Failure to Protect.This series also won aPeabody Award, the second for the station after a joint award to KARE and KUSA in Denver in 2022.
KARE, which relocated its digital signal from its pre-transitionUHFchannel 35 to VHF channel 11 upon the digital transition in 2009,was approved in 2020 to relocate to UHF channel 31 to aid reception after thespectrum incentive auction.The station switched to the new UHF signal on October 20, 2021.
On December 11, 2024, KARE announced an agreement with the Timberwolves to simulcast five games withFanDuel Sports Network Northduring the2024–25 season. The deal also includes the rights to simulcast pre- and post-game coverage. This marked the first time since 2000–01 that the Timberwolves have aired locally on KARE.
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
In addition to the main transmitter in Shoreview, KARE's signal is relayed to outlying parts of Minnesota through a network oftranslatorsowned by various translator associations.
KARE formerly had a translator servingBreezy PointandBrainerd, KLKS-LP (channel 14), which was owned by the Lakes Broadcasting Group, owner ofKLKSradio. The repeater signed on in 1995 and operated until July 16, 2011, when its use as a repeater of KARE was discontinued due to a corporate decision made by Gannett management.