WWTC (1280 AM, "The Patriot") is a long-standing, yet often troubled and unlistened-to radio station serving the Twin Cities region. Despite its issues, the station spawned two of the area's major television stations and had some very innovative and unusual periods in its history. Today, it is owned by Salem Communications and broadcasts a talk radio format that has stemmed the frequency's slide towards oblivion.

The station began as WRHM in 1925, and was part of NBC's Blue Network. It was purchased in 1935 by Twin Cities Newspapers, a company representing the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Minneapolis Tribune, and changed its call letters to WTCN at that time. The station remained an NBC Blue station through the network's selloff, becoming an American Broadcasting Company (ABC) affiliate in the 1940s.

The station had an experimental frequency modulation transmitter by 1939. W9XTC at 26.05 MHz operated for several years, but by 1944 was only being activated intermittently. Area station KSTP also experimented with the medium around this time, as did WCCO.

WTCN-TV began broadcasting on channel 4 on July 1, 1949, becoming the second modern station in the state after KSTP-TV took to the air a year earlier. However, the station merged with WCCO radio on August 17, 1952 and soon changed its call letters. This TV station switched to the CBS affiliaton of its parent company.

WTCN quickly applied for a new license for channel 11, but had to negotiate with WMIN for the frequency. The two stations arranged to share the broadcast day, alternating every two hours. This became the area's third station, and kept the WTCN call sign until 1985. The TV station was merged and sold to the H.M. Bitner Group in 1955 and cycled through several owners, including Metromedia, before eventually becoming an NBC-affiliated station. It is now known as KARE.

The AM station eventually changed its call sign to WWTC. It barely registered in the ratings for a long time until the early 1980s when it briefly became an oldies station known as the "Golden Rock." With a number of quirky DJs such as "Ugly Del" Roberts and Steve "Boogie" Bowman, the station managed to win an audience in spite of management screw-ups left and right. Following a collapse after a few years, the station went through a long string of format changes, and briefly flew the call sign KSNE.

In the early 1990s, the station became known as "Radio Aahs" and transitioned to an unusual format: made by children for children. This also provided a modicum of stability for a while, and the station became the flagship of Children's Broadcasting Corporation. Children's Broadcasting eventually came to own several radio outlets and had its content reach a network of 29 stations across the United States (Aahs World Radio) by about 1996. Disney was working with the station around this time, but with the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, ABC co-opted the format, launching Radio Disney. KQRS's old 1440 AM signal was renamed to KDIZ. WWTC could no longer compete, and the format was discontinued in 1998.

For a short period, the network became known as "Beat Radio," hosted by area DJ Alan Freed. Freed had previously set up a pirate radio station in downtown Minneapolis that had garnered a positive response from the public but was shut down by the FCC after broadcasting at 20 watts for a few months. Freed played electronic dance music across ten Children's Broadcasting stations between the shutdown of Radio Aahs in February and the final approval of a buyout of WWTC in October. A few years after that, he went on to work at three channels of XM Satellite Radio.

The 2000s decade brought the station's newest incarnation, "The Patriot." Some old hands of the station including Del Roberts once again took to the 1280 AM frequency (however, Roberts died in 2003).

Area author Jeff Lonto wrote a book about the station in 1998, Fiasco At 1280 (ISBN 0966021347), which covered many of the screwups during the 1980s. Somewhat unfortunately, it was published just before the financial crisis of that year, so it doesn't include that part of the station's story. In 2002, the former Children's Broadcasting owners (who now operate Intelefilm) won a court case against Disney, and were awarded $9.5 million. Payments totaling $12.4 million, including $2.6 million in interest, were finally handed out in 2004.

External links

• AM 1280: The Patriot (http://www.am1280thepatriot.com/)
• Ugly Del (http://www.uglydel.com/)
• Beat Radio (http://www.beatworld.com/)
• Studio Z-7 Publishing: Fiasco At 1280 (http://www.studioz-7.com/fiasco.html)

References

• Mike Mosedale. Red, White, and Green. (http://www.citypages.com/databank/23/1107/article10161.asp?page=5) City Pages. Retrieved January 18, 2004.
• History of KARE-11. (http://www.kare11.com/faq/history.aspx) KARE-TV. Retrieved January 18, 2004.
• Jeff Miller (editor). AM Broadcasting History - Various Articles. (http://members.aol.com/jeff560/am9.html) Retrieved January 18, 2004.
• Barry Mishkind (2004). Early FM Radio in the US. (http://www.oldradio.com/archives/dial/1939fm.htm) Oldradio.com. Retrieved January 18, 2004.