Special Reports

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) ― In July of 1949, WCCO TV started broadcasting for the first time. The station was called WTCN back then. Announcer Bud Kraehling didn't get to introduce the afternoon movie that first day. That privilege fell to a more senior employee.

Kraehling didn't see that first broadcast. Like most people, he didn't have a television yet. Still, Kraehling knows something went wrong. On day two, he was called in early to Radio City Theater. Managers didn't want a repeat of that bumpy first day.

"I wondered to myself, it seemed so simple, what had gone wrong the day before?" said Kraehling.

Things started to go right after that.

"It expanded so quickly into the morning hours and later in the afternoon," recalled Kraehling.

The station was slow to expand to 10 p.m. Kraeling suspects it's because the station didn't want to compete with Cedric Adams. Adams' 10 p.m. WTCN radio newscast was listened to my people all over the region.

"Actually the first ten o'clock program was a weather forecast, just by itself, five minutes of weather at ten," said Kraeling, who hosted that first low-tech 10 p.m. weathercast.

Dave Moore arrived in 1952, the same year WTCN changed its call letters switched to WCCO. By then the station had a 10 p.m. newscast.
Moore took viewers behind the scenes in a special called News As It Happens. He showed viewers a newsroom filled with white men dressed in suits and ties, a big change from today's newsroom.

"Each and every assignment must pass the hands of the skilled editors who man this lab," explained Moore.

WCCO did a lot of local programming back then. There were shows like "Clancy and Willie," "Carmen the Nurse" and "Bowlarama." Long before "Saturday Night Live"'s Weekend Update mocked the news, Dave Moore did it with his "Bedtime Nooz."

"I remember thinking I'm going to television college. If I just watch them, I can learn," said Nancy Nelson. In 1960, she was a teenage actress hired to be the "Midnight Weather Girl." "It was the era of the go-go boots and mini skirts, it's hard to even imagine now," said Nelson, who covered the weather by walking on a giant weather map on the floor. "After me, Billy, Bill Carlson did 'This Must Be the Place,' she said.

The weather girl and the TV host became friends and eventually much more. Nelson laughed as she talked about her late husband, "I met Bill Carlson and got him to marry me."

In 1962, 'CCO made television history with the world's first ever satellite liveshot.

One of the guys who made it happen was Jerry Bergstrom, better known as Bergie. "He was kind of like the McGuyer of engineering, y'know here's a toothpick, here's a piece of gum, I'm gonna make this work," said Karna Bergstrom. She's heard a lot of Bergie stories since joining 'CCO as a web producer in 2006. Karna figures if her Grandpa could deal with old-fashioned film, he could manage modern equipment, too.

"He still would have grabbed his toothpick and his stick of gum and figured out how to make HD work or something like that," she said.

"You have to remember, 'CCO was doing some incredible groundbreaking work," said Bill Hudson. The current Channel 4 reporter grew up watching the station as a kid in Elk River. "Dave Moore did a lot of reports on Sunday nights called Moore on Sundays back then. We had an entire documentary unit. I think it was watching those types of programs that I felt this is what I want to do," said Hudson, who joined 'CCO in 1989.

One of the shows that inspired Hudson was "Grunt's Little War," Al Austin's award-winning look at Vietnam through the eyes of a combat soldier. Reporting from the war zone, Austin explained, "There's a cynical saying here: 'It's not much of a war, but it's the only one we've got.'"

Don Shelby came on board in 1978 and helped start the I-TEAM. The I-TEAM tried to uncover wrongdoing wherever we found it. They showed just how prevalent the sexual abuse of children was, even finding a Hennepin County judge who picked up teenage boys for sex. Another early I-Team showed public employees wasting time and taxpayers' dollars.

"I loved the fact that 'CCO had the I-TEAM. I loved the kind of muscle, the journalistic muscle it gave 'CCO," said Dave Nimmer, who worked as a reporter, manager and host at 'CCO from 1979 to 1989. "We weren't breathless, we didn't come on the air and tell you the sky was falling and the world was about to end," he recalled.

In 1983, the station moved to its current digs on 11th street, something that was celebrated in true Dave Moore-style. At the end of that first night's 10 p.m. broadcast, Moore started jumping up and down and dancing around the new news set. Then the rest of the staff joined him.

In the years that followed, we took our viewers all over the world. Photographer Bob Cowan and I were able to show the plight of Romanian orphans in our Iron Crib series. My former colleague Colleen Needles reported on the degradation of the Rainforest. When an oil tanker crashed off the coast of Alaska, we were there.

"Y'know when I first started, I had a suitcase packed and ready to go at a moments notice because we were always on the road," said Hudson. We don't do as much traveling as we used to. Money's tight everywhere, including at 'CCO.

"Has it lost its journalistic chops? No, I don't think so," said Nimmer, who became a journalism professor at the University of St. Thomas. "When the 35W bridge collapses, they get on the air and they do it well."

"It's amazing to me that it's been 60 years," said Kraeling. A lot of things have changed in six decades, but a lot of things haven't.

"This is where my Grandpa was, this is the same building he worked in," said Karna Bergstrom.

"I work with some very talented, talented people, and I always have," said Hudson.

"In a lot of ways, CCO still embraces the 'Come on over, friend and talk to me,'" said Nelson.

Good people. Good stories. And for those of us lucky enough to have worked here, many good times.

"It was just so much fun," said Krahling.

It was. And it still is.

Paula Engelking, Producer
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