WCCO-AM
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WCCO Radio, Named for the Washburn Crosby Company, began broadcasting in the Twin Cities Metro Area on the frequency of 710 kilohertz in 1924, the second radio station (and first for-profit commercial broadcaster) in the nation. In 1928, WCCO changed its frequency to 810 kHz and just before the Second World War changed again to 830 kHz, where it has remained since that time. In the early days of radio, WCCO was a powerful force in the development of better and more powerful transmitters. During those days, WCCO broadcasters were minor celebrities across the Midwest, one of whom - Steve Cannon - had a distinguished broadcasting career spanning nearly six decades. WCCO Radio is known in its home market by its call letters, the phrase "Radio 8-3-0" or the nicknames "'CCO" or "The Good Neighbor", and plays a talk-oriented format, presenting news, opinion and a number of shows throughout the day, with occasional short stories like the station's "Point of Law" program which serves to both entertain and educate the station's listeners about finer points of the American legal system.
In 1952, WCCO - a Columbia Broadcasting Service affiliate - merged with three-year-old WTCN-TV (Channel 4, then jointly owned by the Minneapolis Tribune and Saint Paul Pioneer Press; the call letters stood for Twin Cities Newspapers), an ABC affiliate. WTCN lost its identity and became WCCO-TV (to be reborn a year later, again as an ABC affiliate).
WCCO-AM's transmitter is located in Coon Rapids, Minnesota.
Until cable television became common in the early 1990s, WCCO was the exclusive carrier of most Twin Cities sporting events (Twins baseball, Minnesota Vikings football, Minnesota North Stars hockey and U of M athletics) on television and radio. Since 1992, however, rival Fox won NFL football from CBS and carried with it the Vikes, and the North Stars skipped town entirely; when hockey returned to Minnesota in the form of the Minnesota Wild, it would affiliate with former hometown independent KMSP. Between the 2003 and 2004 seasons, Twins baseball was spun off of WCCO TV onto sports network Victory One (co-owned between WCCO and Twin Cities rivals KSTP and KARE), leaving the radio broadcasts with WCCO and the voices of Herb "The Voice of the Twins" Carneal and John Gordon. WCCO-TV's transmitter is located in Shoreview, Minnesota.
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