KARE (TV)

KARE (channel 11) is a television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, serving as the NBC affiliate for the Twin Cities area. Owned by Tegna Inc., the station maintains studios on Olson Memorial Highway (MN 55) in Golden Valley and a transmitter at the Telefarm site in Shoreview, Minnesota.

Channel 11 began broadcasting on September 1, 1953. It was originally shared by two stations: WMIN-TV in St. Paul and WTCN-TV in Minneapolis, which alternated presenting local programs and shared an affiliation with ABC. In 1955, Consolidated Television and Radio bought both stations and merged them as WTCN-TV from the Minneapolis studios in the Calhoun 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 to KMSP-TV (channel 9), leaving channel 11 to become an independent station that broadcast the Minnesota Twins, movies, and syndicated programs. This continued under two successive owners: Chris-Craft Industries and Metromedia. By the late 1970s, WTCN-TV was one of the most financially successful independent stations in the U.S.

In 1978, ABC announced it would move its Twin Cities affiliation to KSTP-TV. This forced NBC to select between KMSP and WTCN for its new local outlet. It chose WTCN over KMSP 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 broadcasting NewsCenter 11 newscasts. The much-ballyhooed 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 leaders WCCO-TV and KSTP.

Metromedia agreed to buy Chicago independent station WFLD in 1982 and sold WTCN-TV to the Gannett Company to 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 with WCCO-TV 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 to its station in Washington, D.C.