KARE 11 history

On April 3, 1955, with FCC approval, WMIN sold its share of channel 11 and WTCN-TV took over the frequency full-time.

On April 16, 1961, KMSP-TV (channel 9) took the ABC affiliation and WTCN-TV became an independent station.

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 announced its purchase of WTCN-TV from Chris-Craft in July 1971.

NBC continued to struggle early in the 1980s (including the loss of the 1980 Summer Olympics to the American boycott), and channel 11 was no exception.

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.

The station's "Backyard" weather studio was also launched in 1983, coinciding with the arrival of meteorologist Paul Douglas in May.

On April 27, 2006, KARE became the first station in the Twin Cities to broadcast its local newscasts in high definition.

All newscasts continued to be presented in 4:3 (standard definition) as well as simulcast in 16:9 (high definition) until the federally mandated digital transition on June 12, 2009.

Around the first week of October 2012, Gannett entered a dispute against Dish Network regarding compensation fees and Dish's AutoHop commercial-skip feature on its Hopper digital video recorders.