The stations farm director was feted across the states ag belt and held down important on-air segments each day. Keep it clean, keep it Minnesotan, please. Broadcasters have until Tuesday to indicate their interest in participating in the March 29 reverse auction. Fees asked for by the station may have been too high to renew a contract. Theres not a future in bland. WCCO had been the radio flagship of the Minnesota Vikings football team from 1961 to 1969, 1976 to 1984, 1988 to 1990, and 1996 to 2000. WCCO Radio recently made significant changes to its on-air lineup. He is without question the most talented weve had here at WCCO, says CCO evening host Mike Max. WCCO. These doubters suggest WCCO is billing closer to $9 million to $10 million including digital. The sale was conducted using a Reverse Morris Trust to shield the deal from taxes. I recently noticed that she doesnt seem to work for the station anymore, but there is next to no information regarding her departure. Editors note: Since this article went to press there have been these developments: WCCO Radio parent Entercom Communications announced a corporate rebranding as Audacy Inc.Audacy.comalso replaces radio.com as its streaming brand. For several years, WCCO has hosted a weekly radio show with the governor of Minnesota. Selective TV is a non-profit over-the-air television programming system supported by viewer contributions. Sometimes taking the connection apart and reconnecting can improve the physical connection of the signal conductor. [12][13], In 2018, WCCO returned to the moniker "News/Talk 830 WCCO" with its logo reflecting the change.[14]. When broadcaster Steve Cannon "the Iron Ranger" (who referred to WCCO as 'The evil neighbor') and his cast of characters arrived at WCCO from AM 1500 KSTP in 1971, he was still thought of by many as the "new guy" nearly until his retirement 26 years later. Lee is a native of Hatton, North Dakota, the son of a rural mailman. iHeart went bankrupt in 2018, the same year Cumulus emerged from Chapter 11. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. Everything on WCCO Radio can be sponsored: time checks, weather forecasts, news updates, the studio itself. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. The supposition is that to maximize the economic leverage of owning an urban radio cluster, one or another of these groups will engage in a sale or swap to produce a second six-station cluster. WCCO started broadcasting University of St. Thomas football beginning in the 20112012 season. The WCCO-TV signal is back to full power again after being out for several hours on Sunday for people who watch over-the-air or through satellite companies that receive the signal from the transmitter. Alexandria area residents raised about $500,000 to set up the Selective TV system more than 35 years ago. December 18, 2020 1:18 pm. WCCO is missing from my lineup - why? The time may come when one does not preclude the other Archived post. . (Entercom says the age is 53, perhaps relying on a lesser used metric known as median cume, which was under 54 for one month in 2020.) Had Entercom made an offer for GO, it could have acquired an FM signal for WCCO for less than the cost of a years revenue on The Wolf. Entercom doesnt understand the legacy, says Quick, but if Shannon [Knoepke] can sell the heck out of it, it doesnt matter. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. Listeners would call in during severe weather events and describe what they were seeing at their locations, supplementing information from the National Weather Service. See our full republication guidelines for more information. Dave Lee is arguably the last in a line of legacy talent connecting the station with its heyday of the 1960s and 70s. Knoepke dismissed John Hanson during the winter, the third programming exec she has replaced during her six-year tenure. ICYMI: An air quality alert is in effect through Tuesday, with conditions being called unprecedented. Lane spent the bulk of his radio career at KSTP/Hubbard Broadcasting in a variety of on- and off-air roles. (Most news/talk stations attract a disproportionately male audience.) Obvious local radio competitors thatTCBspoke to are uninterested or hemmed in by noncompete clauses or contracts. WCCO has a tattered rep replacing marquee talent. Fees asked for by the station may have been too high to renew a contract. With its diverse range of shows and topics covered, it has something to offer for everyone. Stations that do relinquish their broadcast bandwidth would be required to have a 39-month post-auction television transition to put into effect their required changes, according to the FCC site. 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. But KCCO will end at the end of this year, according to a letter that CBS Senior Vice President John Bagwell sent to the Federal Communications Commission in October. Water City Chamber Orchestra. Meanwhile, several local FM stations had already boosted their power to 100,000 watts and were airing new formats on FM, such as beautiful music and progressive rock. The following year, WCCO experienced an enormous ratings drop. [citation needed] One sign of the changing times: the well-known farm report was dropped in early 2004, reflecting the fact that many farmers began to rely more on the Internet for such information and that the number of farmers in Minnesota has drastically shrunk since the station first began broadcasting (although agriculture remains vital to the region). Howard Viken, Maynard Speece, Charlie Boone and Roger Erickson, Jergen Nash, Joyce Lamont, and Randy Merriman became household names. Those continuing to use over-the-air TV would not be required to purchase any new equipment, as many consumers did during the 2009 transition from analog to digital broadcasts. This has never been done anywhere in the world, Meisch said. "They told me they wanted to go in a different direction," Johnson said Monday . If you have questions, emaileditors@minnpost.com. Our reporters are only able to do their work thanks to support at all levels. Community Music. Even television wants part of CCOs legacy. WCCO is also a PEP station for the Emergency Alert System. The alert goes into effect Wednesday at 10. learn about all our free newsletter options, Forced sale in Hennepin County prompts Supreme Court to decide constitutionality of Minnesotas forfeiture law. Johnson announced the news via a Monday morning Facebook post. The strike ended and talent returned, but a third of WCCOs audience did not. The station hired Brad Lane as market manager for WCCO from WTMJ in Milwaukee. Is the station gone completely, or another channel in its place? The answer is that the airwaves belong to the public and as such are subject to this kind of regulation. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. Its key to note that as of this winter, Entercom stock was down 62 percent since buying CBS Radio. I even went to the KIMT station studio in rochester to see if they had requested CCO to be removed from the cable line up and their place was locked up like Ft Knox and they wouldn't answer their telecom at the door either. But when the camera pans in . [2] Question About Spectrum Voice (Landline) Caller ID Information? Knoepke is regarded by competitors and staff as a capable executive but her background is entirely in sales. MinnPost's in-depth, independent news is free for all to access no paywall or subscriptions. CCO suggests it is ready. Jim Borgrud, president of Selective TV, said that is a reference to the potential deal with Selective TV. After years of programming to the least diverse aspects of Minnesotas population, WCCO has made strides in recent years to diversify its air talent. One outsized aspect of the advertising effort at CCO is personal endorsements by program hosts in place of recorded ads. World and national news is supplied by CBS News Radio. It is common for some problems to be reported throughout the day. In the 1980s, the playlist shifted from middle-of-the-road music toward adult contemporary. In 2019 WCCO-TV had no measurable viewing, and in 2020 it reached a 0.02 percent share of total viewing hours and 1.81 percent net weekly circulation including one standard error. Questions about its future are not new to WCCO yet it has long shied away from dramatic shifts in tone or emphasis. As of Friday morning, air quality conditions were listed as unhealthy around the Twin Cities and in north-central Minnesota. If it can stave off additional audience erosion, it can tread water for a long time before sinking below the horizon. On November 11, 1928, with the implementation of the Federal Radio Commission's General Order 40, WCCO changed its frequency to 810kHz and was granted clear-channel status. Due to the station's power, as well as Minnesota's mostly flat landscape (with near-perfect ground conductivity), WCCO boasts one of the largest coverage areas in the country. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. The station's owner, Audacy Inc for WCCO sold to a new company so Spectrum has to get a new agreement from the new station owners. Were going through a search process, auditions.. Theyll take a look at it.. Please enable javascript and refresh the page to continue reading local news. Rate it: WCCO. As late as 1969, WCCO-FM was broadcasting at 2,700 watts atop the 450-foot Foshay Tower in downtown Minneapolis, and only for the minimum number of hours required to keep its FCC license. Hanson declined an interview, but Bloom does not accept the thesis, saying he had numerous detailed conversations with Knoepke before his hire: [She] did not hire me because [she] was satisfied with 180 cume (see sidebar, below) and 4.5 share., Bloom believes he was hired to evolve to a sharper-edged news/current events format, but Knoepke got cold feet. Box 18438 | Minneapolis, MN 55418 | 612.455.6950. Certain conditions can make the signal reach much farther. WCCO (830 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and owned by Audacy, Inc. [1] Its studios and offices are located on Second Avenue South in Downtown Minneapolis. WCCO needs to get on FM. Hes in a lot of different settings. Selective TV has made a proposal to CBS to pick up transmission of the WCCO signal but a deal has not been finalized. Pilots flying over the Upper Midwest reported watching the lights go out all over the region each night when Adams finished his 10 pm newscast. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. It was surreal, it was the place. Those are the words of Jon Quick, WCCOs marketing director, then program director, from 1980 to 1992. A full day's programming of music and a large news operation could be heard clearly for 150 miles in all directions. Usually when these things happen it is one of the following: 1.) Other factors had an impact as well. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. News and talk listeners are in higher demand, he says. WCCO has perfected these endorsements, or sponsorships, as it calls them, and they likely represent a greater share of revenue for the station than any other locally. Langmyer was the vice president of CBS Radios news/talk group in the 2000s (including WCCO) and ran KMOX in St. Louis and WGN in Chicago, two of a handful of similar heritage AM stations left in the country. Anselmo says most stations are getting 10 to 15 percent of their audience from the stream. Theyve had a huge run. Dave has the strongest relationships with clients in their building, notes an exec at a competing radio group. ), Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information. WCCO first signed on the air on September 4, 1922, as WLAG, known as "the Call of the North". "They are married. Jason DeRusha, the longtime WCCO-TV morning news anchor and co-host of "WCCO Mid-Morning," announced on Tuesday that he was leaving the television station he's been with for nearly 20 years. For decades, WCCO was the place Minnesotans turned for news and sports. TV watchers that use an antenna in Douglas County get most of their channels from the Selective TV tower. He turned down a job in the stations sports department, but eventually my wife said, If you dont give it a shot youll regret it. Lee arrived at CCO in 1989. 2.) Channel 4 is completely gone from the lineup. Said one CCO insider, he had the misfortune to arrive with a sports-oriented mentality in a period when hard news became primary., Knoepke says she intends to replace Hanson with a leader with forward vision.. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". Though Knoepke is well-liked and described as a leader by most of the staffTCBinterviewed, it is unclear how much decision-making authority Entercom cedes to local management. Morning drive will continue to be our strongest daypart, she says. Knoepke declined to say anything specific about WCCOs audience makeup or future goals. For most of his first decade at the station, Lee did AM drive fill-in work. Today, the station is boxed in. If you want to look at building new audience, you need to be on FM.. With the move to Division I starting in the 2021 season, the football games would move to KSTP. We had a 30 [percent audience] share much of the day and a 35 share in AM drive.. The auction could well reverse much of this progress if some or all of the stations in a particular market stopped broadcasting over the air. Legendary station personality Howard Viken said that he once picked up the station while he was in the military during World War II, stationed at Guadalcanal in 1943. Now all that information is available on a smartphone;CCO dropped farm reports two generations ago. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. Donations made by check can be made out to MinnPost and mailed to us at PO Box 18438, Minneapolis, MN 55418. Without a deal, viewers that relied on the KCCO signal may not be able to pick up CBS. The St. Thomas football broadcasts would be caried on WCCO until the 2019-2020 season with no season in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For many years, WCCO was famous for its "klaxon" alert tone for tornado warnings. Bagwell's letter does say that "CBS is working with another translator operator that might potentially begin simulcasting the WCCO-TV signal to some viewers within KCCO-TV's current service contour.". It remains a CBS affiliate. WCCO became the radio home of Minnesota Timberwolves basketball team starting with the 20112012 season, acquiring the broadcast rights from rival AM 1130 KFAN. Once the auction concludes, consumers who receive digital content over the air through a converter box will likely have to re-scan their channels, but their favorite programming should continue on their usual channel numbers. As Lee moves from drive time to a photo on the stations wall of fame, WCCO faces the same question it has faced throughout the last quarter-century: What is the cure for its chronic audience atrophy, and is it worse than the disease? For radio to work right now, people need to know what youre about, says noon3 p.m. host Chad Hartman. Morning drive has pretty much transitioned to news, Lee says. Perhaps the greatest of them all was Cedric Adams, who first was heard on WCCO in 1931, and broadcast on the station until his death in 1961. Accordingly, we conclude that the Petitioner has met its burden and demonstrates that WCCO-TV fails to meet the requirements to maintain its status as significantly viewed in Rochester. Reporter Jason Derusha bid goodbye to WCCO This Morning on June 23 after 19 years of his service on the TV network. BIA Kelsey estimates CCO is the fourth highest-billing radio station in town. It was reassigned to 830 AM in 1941. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". Also in 1979, Hubbard-owned KSTP-FM became KS95 and, under program director Chuck Knapp, emerged as the towns first FM station that did more than just play music. Discussing the one-year anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Vascellaro was supposed to say "insurrection" but unfortunately, cut off the "ins-." The station soon had financial trouble and closed in 1924. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. Your local TV weather forecaster is ad . The industrys fiscal state is constraining its capacity to spend, says former CBS Radio executive Tom Langmyer: There have just been very few transactions of this type in the past few years, period., This story appears in the April/May 2021 issue with the title The Shrinking Neighbor.. The fine particles in the smoke can be harmful to people with lung or heart issues, and they can also affect the elderly and young children. Im in favor of diversity in our content, but Im against tokenism, says Rajkumar, a communications consultant in her weekday job. Broadcasters can relinquish their current channels in order to share channels with other broadcasters after the auction; or. For WCCO to survive the next decade, the consensus is the station needs an FM signal. Member donations are crucial to the work of our nonprofit newsroom. ", "Audacy Announces Updated Programming Lineup for 830 WCCO in Minneapolis", "WCCO-AM 830 kHz - Minneapolis, Minnesota", "CBS Sets Radio Division Merger With Entercom", "CBS and Entercom Are Merging Their Radio Stations", "Entercom Receives FCC Approval for Merger with CBS Radio", "Minneapolis Breaking News, Today's News | WCCO Radio", Offenders of The Faith - The AM STEREO Page, https://hdradio.com/station_guides/widget.php?id=16, The First Forty - The Story of WCCO Radio 1924-1964, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=WCCO_(AM)&oldid=1149713038, This page was last edited on 14 April 2023, at 00:17. Listen 24/7 for free on Audacy. The format is not conducive to [comedy] bits anymore.. It carried NBC's slate of dramas, comedies, news, sports, soap operas, game shows, and big-band broadcasts during the "Golden Age of Radio". The studios were in the Oak Grove Hotel near Loring Park in Minneapolis. 75% of the state is experiencing severe drought. This site has some photos and recordings. He added that his only regret is that he did not have a chance to say goodbye on the air. Coincidentally that year, says Philpott, five FM stations moved their antennas to the IDS Center so their signals blanketed the metro area. [WCCO] overachieves in revenue vs. audience size, says Mark Fratrik, chief economist at BIA Kelsey, a consulting firm that advises the industry. [10][11] The merger was approved on November 9, 2017, and was consummated on November 17. Minnesota's trusted station for news, traffic and weather. KMNB, a radio station (102.9 FM) licensed to serve Minneapolis, Minnesota, which used the call sign WCCO-FM from May 1969 to November 1983. CCO held a 20 share as late as 1991, but by 1998, with Steve Cannon and Boone & Erickson all retired from their drive-time strongholds, the station had fallen to a 10 share. Minneapolis mayor and city staff oppose rent control. The decline of AM radio has been happening for decades. Theres no other person like him in the history of Twin Cities radio. Finally, WCCO remains a cash machine with a community of satisfied advertising partners. This means that with the conversion to digital, a station like WCCO in the Twin Cities can retain its Channel 4 brand identity, while also offering additional over-the-air content on a Channel 4.2, which it does. WCCO broadcasters were known across the Midwest. The essential question to contextualize WCCOs future is whether these dire audience metrics are really meaningful. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. July 31, 2021 / 8:30 AM It does not store any personal data. Though WCCOs ratings do not include listeners outside the metro counties, its programming often seems equally geared to Greater Minnesota. Every format element is a small piggy bank. Weve used WCCO for over 50 years, Fetters says. The permanent impact of the 2008 recession is notable in the data, but also notable is that the falloff in audience is far steeper than revenue.
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