47-614: Radio AAHS was a radio network owned and operated by the Children's Broadcasting Corporation . The flagship station of the format was WWTC (1280 AM) in Minneapolis , from where network programming originated at the former First Federal Bank building in St. Louis Park at Minnesota State Highway 100 and Excelsior Boulevard. At its height in 1996, Radio AAHS had 29 affiliates across the U.S. CBC founder Christopher Dahl had acquired WWTC in 1990 to create
94-512: A conservative talk radio format . By day, WWTC transmits with 10,000 watts. At night, the power is increased to 15,000 watts. WWTC has a directional signal using a four- tower array . The transmitter and radio studios are on Cliff Road near Minnesota State Highway 77 in Eagan . Programming is also heard on 250-watt FM translator K298CO at 107.5 MHz . On weekdays, WWTC carries nationally syndicated conservative talk shows, largely from
141-409: A full service adult contemporary format called the "Splendid Blend", which evolved to an oldies format known as the "Golden Rock." The oldies sound achieved the station's highest ratings in years. With a number of quirky DJs such as "Ugly Del" Roberts, Mick "King Kracker" Wagner, and Steve "Boogie" Bowman, the station managed to win an audience. In 1981, WWTC relocated seven blocks south, back to
188-496: A pirate radio station in downtown Minneapolis in 1996, broadcasting electronic dance music from his apartment on 97.7 FM. Beat Radio gained a positive response from the public, but was shut down by the FCC after operating at 20 watts for a few months. "Beat Radio" aired across Children's Broadcasting's stations beginning in February 1998 between the shutdown of Radio AAHS and the sale of
235-541: A talk format, broadcasting Salem's national stable of conservative hosts, including Dennis Prager , Hugh Hewitt , Larry Elder , Sebastian Gorka , Mark Levin , and Eric Metaxas . The Patriot's locally-focused programs include the long-running Northern Alliance Radio Network, which airs on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and focuses on Minnesota news and related politics. Salem also ran "The Patriot II" on sister station KYCR in Golden Valley . KYCR's program schedule
282-452: A deposition from eventual Radio Disney manager Scott McCarthy, who said that he instructed his staff to meet only certain contractual minimums. The deal with Disney fell apart in June 1996, when then-ABC President David Kantor told CBC that Disney would not exercise its warrants and that it was close to starting its own kids network. On July 30, Disney formally canceled the contract and announced it
329-423: A format consisting largely of music for children, specifically targeted at 5 to 10 year olds. The format included songs from child-oriented films, but also created a niche for songs recorded specifically to entertain children. The programming was driven, in large part, by listener requests, and many of the choices were little known outside that audience. Children's Broadcasting Corp. was founded by Dahl in 1990, with
376-459: A former bank at Excelsior Boulevard and Minnesota Highway 100 in St. Louis Park. In 1994, WWTC's new parent company under Dahl's ownership, Children's Broadcasting Corporation, would acquire religious station KYCR . While the station would move into WWTC's facility, it maintained its religious format. While Radio AAHS would bring some success to WWTC, it would soon face competition from Disney —despite being
423-536: A lawsuit against Disney for $ 9.5 million in damages, with the judgment becoming final in 2004. The assets of Radio AAHS were rolled into Intelefilm Corp. The business changed its focus to provision of digital services and products, but soon filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The award of $ 12.4 million from Disney was used to pay creditors following liquidation of the insolvent company. A sample hour of music early in 1995 included " I Just Can't Wait to Be King " (from The Lion King soundtrack) by Jason Weaver ; " Don't Rock
470-500: A majority share of WCCO Radio from CBS three years later. The TV station's call letters were changed to match the newly acquired radio station on August 17, 1952. A new company, Midwest Radio and Television , was formed as a holding company for the WCCO stations; it was later spun off to the Murphy and McNally families. WCCO-TV is currently owned by CBS directly. This TV station has always had
517-724: A marketing partner for Radio AAHS, Disney would launch its own competing network, Radio Disney , on November 18, 1996. ABC-owned station KQRS would be Radio Disney's Minnesota affiliate. Finding it difficult to compete with Radio Disney, Dahl sued Disney for breaching its agreement with the network, and the Radio AAHS network was shut down in January 1998. In 2002, the former Children's Broadcasting owners (who now operate Intelefilm) won their court case against Disney and were awarded $ 9.5 million. Payments totaling $ 12.4 million, including $ 2.6 million in interest, were finally made in 2004. Following
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#1733085009627564-415: A month of top-40/Adult Contemporary music, an "all-weather" format made its debut. The automated format was unsuccessful for a few reasons, one of which was WCCO Radio's news/weather dominance, especially during extreme conditions. And WWTC's weather format was sometimes heard playing inaccurate information, such as the day's forecast for sunny weather while a storm was overtaking the area. "Weather Radio 1280"
611-765: A network affiliation as an independent TV outlet until it picked up the NBC affiliation in March 1979 during a market-wide affiliate switch. Prior to the TV station's current studio location in Golden Valley, its original studios were in the Calhoun Beach Hotel on Lake Street at Dean Boulevard, where the radio station had moved in 1952 following a three-year occupancy downtown with its former TV sister, WTCN-TV (channel 4). WTCN Radio and TV were sold to Time-Life Broadcast in 1957, and in 1964,
658-466: A new license for channel 11, but had to negotiate for the frequency with the owner of WMIN (1400 AM) , which also applied for the channel. The two stations, WTCN and WMIN, arranged to share the channel, alternating every two hours. This became the area's third TV station on September 1, 1953, and the WTCN-TV call sign remained with it until 1985 when it became known as WUSA. Channel 11 was merged and sold to
705-554: A primary CBS affiliation, an affiliation that has remained consistent to this day (although it aired ABC programming as a secondary affiliation in its early years). WCCO-TV remained at the 9th Street location until 1983, when it moved to Nicollet Mall at 11th Street. WTCN was at the same time sold to the Minnesota Television Service Corporation headed by St. Paul businessman Robert Butler, a former ambassador to Cuba and Australia. The company quickly applied for
752-538: Is a member of the school's 1000 Point Club in basketball and is a 1986 inductee of the Plattsburgh State Athletic Hall of Fame. He graduated in 1966. From 1971 to 1976, Chapin hosted Make a Wish , an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning Sunday-morning children's TV series broadcast on ABC . He occasionally appears in Harry Chapin tribute concerts (often with brother Steve Chapin ). He has appeared in
799-507: Is an American musician, entertainer, singer-songwriter, and storyteller. Chapin is known for the song " Happy Birthday ", released in 1989 in his Moonboat album. It takes its melody from "Love Unspoken", a song featured in the opera The Merry Widow by Franz Lehar . Chapin is the son of Jim Chapin and the brother of Harry Chapin . He graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School . He attended State University of New York at Plattsburgh where he played basketball and baseball. Chapin
846-634: Is one of the oldest radio stations in the Twin Cities. On August 10, 1925, it signed on as WRHM (for "Rosedale Hospital") at 4429 Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis. It shared time for a few months with WDGY at both 1140 AM and 1150 AM. Also that year, the transmitter was moved from the hospital to Fridley. In 1929, WRHM became a network affiliate of the CBS Radio . It switched to NBC 's Blue Network on January 1, 1937. The Rosedale Hospital Company sold
893-622: The Broadway production Pump Boys and Dinettes , among others. Chapin has branched in to the storytelling festival circuit and in 2007 was a Featured New Voices Teller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee . He is married to Bonnie Chapin (née Broecker), former wife of film director Wes Craven and sister of Wallace Smith Broecker . His daughters and stepdaughter are musicians as well; they perform as
940-580: The Chapin Sisters . In April 2008, Chapin appeared at the New York State United Teachers ' Convention, where he sang his song "Not on the Test" for delegates in support of the importance of arts and music education in the age of No Child Left Behind . This song debuted on NPR 's Morning Edition in January 2007. His album with John Forster titled Broadsides: A Miscellany of Musical Opinion
987-491: The CBC stations in late October 1998 to a company planning to run a syndicated service called "Catholic Family Radio." When CFR went bankrupt in 2000, that company sold its stations, including WWTC and sister KYCR, to Salem Communications . Following the purchase by Salem, WWTC began simulcasting new sister station KKMS , until its new co-located studios in Eagan were ready. On March 19, 2001, Salem branded WWTC as "The Patriot" with
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#17330850096271034-462: The H.M. Bitner Group in 1955, and eventually was owned by Metromedia for many years. Tegna, Inc. is the current licensee of KARE . This second incarnation of WTCN-TV was ABC's first full-time television network affiliate in the Twin Cities, but in April 1961, it lost ABC affiliation to then-independent KMSP (now a Fox owned and operated station ). For the next 18 years, channel 11 operated without
1081-592: The Jukebox " by The Chipmunks and Alan Jackson ; " Thank You " by Boyz II Men ; "The Missing Parade" by Tom Chapin ; " She Drives Me Crazy " by Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy ; and " Help! " by Little Texas . Network programming began with a morning show, The All-American Alarm Clock (which was introduced by the Craig Taubman song, "Good Morning" at the top of the hour from 6 to 11 ET), and continued with music throughout
1128-497: The Toy Talk Show were a model for the network for several years, where producers would create and deliver both content and sponsorships for their airtime. With increased production costs, lackluster ratings and the juggernaut of Disney Radio attracting larger audiences and more sponsorship dollars, the shift away from original programming required the network to find an alternative approach to content creation. Advertising revenue for
1175-535: The United States was served by the format by early 1995, and the hope was to cover nearly half the country by the end of the year. Many of the stations had call letters that reflected the programming for children: WWTC WWTC (1280 AM , "The Patriot") is a commercial radio station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota , and serving the Twin Cities region. It is owned by Salem Media Group and broadcasts
1222-532: The Wesley Temple Building on East Grant Street, where it occupied the entire top floor until 1986. The "Golden Rock" format fizzled after a few years, and the station went through a long string of format changes. On November 12, 1984, WWTC adopted a unique locally oriented urban contemporary / alternative rock hybrid format that was called "Metro Music." "Metro Music" ended in September 1985 and, following
1269-418: The beginning to deceive us," according to Dahl. Dahl cited Disney Director of Strategic Planning & Development Lynn Kesterson-Townes as saying, "That her job at Disney for the next six months was to learn all she could regarding Children's operations." In the nine months of the arrangement, CBC claimed Disney sold only $ 23,000 in ads and recruited no new affiliates. In a later lawsuit, CBC's lawyers detailed
1316-528: The co-owned Salem Radio Network . They include Hugh Hewitt , Mike Gallagher , Dennis Prager , Sebastian Gorka , Larry Elder , Charlie Kirk and Eric Metaxas . One program is produced by Westwood One , " The Mark Levin Show ." On weekends, shows on money, health, real estate, movies, the military and aviation are heard, as well as repeats of weekday shows. Some weekend hours are paid brokered programming . Most hours begin with news from Townhall News . WWTC
1363-560: The company was attempting to raise $ 20 million partly to purchase stations in New York and Chicago. CBC and a music division of Time Warner Inc. launched a monthly magazine that included a CD in February 1995. In 1996, Radio AAHS signed a marketing agreement with The Walt Disney Company to expand the AAHS brand. Disney was to sell ads and assist in growing Radio AAHS through its recently purchased ABC Radio . However, "These guys started out right from
1410-440: The concept for a children's radio network . Dahl ran AAHS the format on WWTC as a test run for two years. With Arbitron not tracking listeners under 12, Dahl had commissioned a survey from Arbitron to determine its weekly listeners in 1993, which indicated a total of 90,000. With the survey in hand, Dahl took Children's Broadcasting Corp. public. Radio AAHS then went national, focusing on the country's top 100 markets. In late 1994,
1457-479: The day, as well as a feature of News for Kids , skits, jokes and stories. The network grew by creating original content at a regional level and then serving out the shows to the network at-large. One program, The Toy Talk Show, was produced by Pangea Corporation and hosted by the three directors of the company, John Besmehn , John Schulte and Cheryl Ann Wong, during which children would call in and ask questions about toys, animation and new video games. Programs like
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1504-408: The demise of Radio AAHS, Children's Broadcasting enlisted longtime area programmer, DJ and unlicensed broadcaster Alan Freed to provide interim programming every night for its 10 stations until the stations could be sold. WWTC played random music and syndicated programs during the day. Freed, in addition to having worked at WWTC twice before during its "Golden Rock" and "Metro Music" periods, had set up
1551-647: The launch of WTCN-TV on channel 4, becoming the second modern television station in the state after KSTP-TV launched a year earlier. The original studios were in the Radio City Theater building at 9th Street and LaSalle Avenue. WTCN followed its TV sister to Radio City in September 1949. WTCN-FM also moved to the Radio City location around the same time. However, WTCN-TV channel 4 was short-lived. Twin Cities Newspapers decided to sell WTCN-AM-FM and purchase
1598-475: The legacy WWTC call letters and a second run with the 'Golden Rock' format. During this period, it operated from 215 South 11th Street, in a building in which WCCO-FM (now KMNB) was located for many years. WWTC was sold by the Short family to Christopher Dahl in 1990, and launched on May 12 as the flagship of Radio AAHS , a new radio network which primarily aired children's music . The station moved its studios to
1645-423: The network came from sponsors such as Disney , Mattel and General Mills . During 1995–96, the network's magazine included a CD or tape of Radio AAHS favorites as part of the subscription. As the internet grew in popularity and children gained more access to it, Radio AAHS signed a content carriage agreement with NetRadio , a once rising and popular internet radio site. The intent was to increase ad blocks for both
1692-563: The network discontinued programming in January 1998. The corporation broadcast a mix of random music and paid-programming (6am-6pm CT) and Beat Radio , a dance/club music format (6pm-6am CT), until its ten company-owned stations could be sold. The sale of the last of the stations was completed in late October 1998 to Catholic Family Radio. Some of the Radio Aahs staff joined XM Kids , the children's channel of XM Satellite Radio , which launched in late 2001. In 2002, Children's Broadcasting won
1739-497: The network's selloff, becoming an ABC affiliate in 1945 when NBC Blue formally became ABC. The station kept the ABC affiliation until December 31, 1962. WTCN began broadcasting from a new transmitter and tower in Roseville at the intersection of North Snelling Avenue and Minnesota Highway 36 during 1935, a site that was used until 1962 when the station's transmission facilities were moved to
1786-646: The other side of the expanding Twin Cities metro in St. Louis Park, at a point south of what is now Interstate 394 and west of Minnesota Highway 100, using four towers. WTCN moved from 1250 AM to 1280 AM in March 1941 as required by the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA) under which most American, Canadian and Mexican AM radio stations changed frequencies. The station had an experimental FM transmitter by 1939. W9XTC at 26.05 MHz operated for several years, but by 1944,
1833-522: The radio station relocated to downtown Minneapolis in the Builders Exchange Building at 609 2nd Avenue South, to studios formerly occupied by WDGY. In 1970, WWTC began broadcasting 24 hours a day and played soft popular music. Over the years, WWTC had a number of formats, including the distinction of being the Twin Cities' first all-news radio station (using NBC's News and Information Service), beginning in June 1975. In 1979, WWTC switched to
1880-587: The same year, with KYCR taking on the business news and talk format. Area author Jeff Lonto wrote a book about the station in 1998, "Fiasco At 1280" ( ISBN 0-9660213-4-7 ), which covered many of the station's missteps during the 1980s. The book was published just before the demise of "Radio Aahs," so it doesn't include that part of the station's story. 44°57′41″N 93°21′24″W / 44.96139°N 93.35667°W / 44.96139; -93.35667 Tom Chapin Tom Chapin (born March 13, 1945)
1927-416: The siblings were separated with the TV going to Chris-Craft Industries (which would later own KMSP) while the radio stations were purchased by Buckley-Jaeger. The call letters were changed to WWTC-AM-FM on October 1. This change was made due to an FCC rule in place at the time that prohibited stations in the same market, but with different ownership, from having the same fundamental call signs. In early 1965,
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1974-571: The station to the Minnesota Broadcasting Company in 1930. The studio relocated from the hospital to the new Wesley Temple Building at 115 East Grant Street in Minneapolis. WRHM was purchased in September 1934 by Twin Cities Newspapers, a partnership between the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Minneapolis Tribune , and the call sign was changed to WTCN at that time. The station remained an NBC Blue Network affiliate through
2021-481: The traditional radio network and web streaming. As part of its expansion and vision, NetRadio was eager to attract a children's audience, due to the amount of advertising dollars that are spent on that demographic. In addition to flagship station WWTC in Minneapolis, Radio AAHS was broadcast on AM stations nationwide and on an FM station in Spokane, Washington. In its fifth year, Radio AAHS had 27 affiliates. 30 percent of
2068-406: Was blown out after 10 months. "Sunny 1280" was next, a 16-month run as adult standards using new call letters, KSNE (effective June 20, 1986). In November 1987, the station became known as "The Breeze", taking a satellite feed of an early and more diverse form of what is now known as " smooth jazz " from a service run by the former owner of KTWN 108 . On May 27, 1988, the station switched back to
2115-427: Was creating its own kids network. Following that announcement, Disney informed Radio AAHS that it was no longer allowed to broadcast from Disney theme parks. Disney's launch of its own, CHR -oriented children's network, Radio Disney , spelled the demise of Radio AAHS. Children's Broadcasting Corporation was unable to compete with Disney's name recognition and resources. After briefly renaming itself AAHS World Radio ,
2162-529: Was initially almost the same as WWTC, with the addition of Bill O'Reilly 's midday show, and mostly aired repeats of shows already on WWTC. In 2007, KYCR changed to a separate talk format as "AM 1570: The New Talk of the Twin Cities", and would later shift to a business news format as "Business 1570, Twin Cities Business Radio." In December 2015, KYCR flipped to a health-oriented talk format known as "Wellness Radio 1570". KYCR swapped call letters with KDIZ
2209-467: Was only being activated intermittently. Local stations KSTP and WCCO also experimented with FM broadcasts around this time. Once the modern FM band was established, WTCN attempted again to broadcast on WTCN-FM 97.1 from 1947 to 1954. However, few people owned FM receivers in that era and the FM license was surrendered in 1954. On July 1, 1949, Twin Cities Newspapers expanded to television broadcasting with
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