WCCO-TV

WCCO-TV, channel 4, is a CBS owned-and-operated television station, licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA and serving the Twin Cities television market. WCCO-TV's studios are located on South 11th Street in downtown Minneapolis, and its transmitter is located at the Telefarm complex in Shoreview, Minnesota.

WCCO-TV's programming is also seen on two full-power satellite stations: KCCO-TV (channel 7) in Alexandria, Minnesota; and KCCW-TV (channel 12) in Walker, Minnesota.

History

WCCO-TV's roots originate with a radio station, but not the one with which it is affiliated today. Radio station WRHM, which signed on the air in 1925, is the station to which WCCO-TV traces its lineage. In 1934, two newspapers – the Minneapolis Tribune and the Saint Paul Pioneer Press-Dispatch – formed a joint venture named "Twin Cities Newspapers", which purchased the radio station and changed its call letters to WTCN. Twin Cities Newspapers later expanded into the fledgling FM band with WTCN-FM, and shortly thereafter the then-new medium of television with the launch of WTCN-TV on July 1, 1949 as Minnesota's second television station, broadcasting from the Radio City Theater at 50 South 9th Street in downtown Minneapolis.

WCCO

WCCO may refer to:

WCCO (AM)

WCCO (830 kHz) is a Class A clear-channel radio station located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA and owned by CBS Radio. Its studios are located in the CBS Radio Building, 625 Second Avenue South, in downtown Minneapolis. WCCO features talk radio and news programming, with local hosts most hours of the day and night. Its transmitter is located in Coon Rapids, Minnesota. With 50,000 watts of power, and a non-directional signal, WCCO reaches a wide area of North America at night.

From 1947 to 1996, WCCO radio and WCCO-TV (channel 4) won twelve George Foster Peabody Awards, more than any other Twin Cities broadcast outlet.

History

Early years

WCCO began broadcasting in the region on September 4, 1922 as WLAG, known as "the Call of the North", from a hotel near Loring Park in Minneapolis. However, the station soon landed in financial trouble and closed down in 1924. Washburn Crosby Company, forerunner of General Mills, took over the station and renamed it WCCO for the company's initials. Broadcasts resumed less than two months later on October 2, 1924 from its current transmitter site in Coon Rapids.