Television
Twin Cities Public Television operates both KTCA and KTCI. Hubbard Broadcasting owns KSTP and has a second TV station, KSTC, which is not affiliated with any network. KMSP and WFTC have now merged as well, and KARE currently has a marketing agreement with KPXM. The only station with its main studios in Minneapolis is WCCO, while St. Paul is host to KSTP/KSTC, KTCA/KTCI, and WUCW. Other stations are located in the suburbs. For much of the last two decades, KARE has had the most popular evening newscasts of the area channels (though WCCO still dominates in the morning slots, and has had more viewership on its programs for around the same duration). On the other end, KSTP has struggled to maintain ratings on its news programs. KMSP has had a 9 o'clock newscast since at least the early 1990s when it was a UPN affiliate.
KSTP claims to have been the first station in the country to run a regular nightly newscast. It is the oldest station in the state to still be operating, having first gone on the air in 1948. TV broadcasts first occurred more than a decade earlier during the 1930s when engineers for radio station WDGY (now KFAN) experimented with a mechanical television system. Mechanical TV quickly lost favor, and the station's owner decided to let the license expire in 1938.
Communities in the region have their own Public, educational, and government access (PEG) cable tv channels. One channel, the Metro Cable Network, is available on channel 6 on cable systems across the seven-county region. Minneapolis Telecommunications Network (MTN) has three Public-access television cable TV channels and Saint Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN) has two.
Area residents of the right age look back fondly on many of the locally-produced shows that were on the air for about two decades, from the early days of TV in Minnesota up until the 1970s. WCCO, KSTP, KMSP, and WTCN (now KARE) all had children's shows, though there were a few other notable shows meant for an older audience.
Several television programs originating in the Twin Cities have been aired nationally on terrestrial and cable TV networks. KTCA created the science program Newton's Apple and distributes a children's program today. A few unusual comedic shows also originated in the area. In the 1980s, KTMA (predecessor to WUCW) created a number of low-budget shows, including the cult classic Mystery Science Theater 3000 (which later aired on The Comedy Channel/Comedy Central from 1989 to 1996 and the Sci-Fi Channel from 1997 to 2004). The short-lived Let's Bowl (which aired on Comedy Central) started on KARE, and the PBS series Mental Engineering originated on the St. Paul Public-access television network.
Read more about this topic: Media In Minneapolis-St. Paul
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
“Never before has a generation of parents faced such awesome competition with the mass media for their children’s attention. While parents tout the virtues of premarital virginity, drug-free living, nonviolent resolution of social conflict, or character over physical appearance, their values are daily challenged by television soaps, rock music lyrics, tabloid headlines, and movie scenes extolling the importance of physical appearance and conformity.”
—Marianne E. Neifert (20th century)
“What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.”
—Salvador Dali (1904–1989)