Reflecting on the 75th anniversary of WCCO-TV

CATHY WURZER: WCCO was known as WTCN-TV before the station merged with legendary radio station WCCO and became WCCO-TV. At that time, there were about 60,000 TV sets in the entire Twin Cities area. A person responsible for shaping the station throughout the second half of the 20th century was Ron Handberg. He was the producer of the first Scene Tonight, a groundbreaking newscast that first aired in 1968.

Handberg went on to become the station's longtime news director and then vice president and general manager of the station. I asked him to paint a picture of those early years when he first arrived at WCCO-TV.

RON HANDBERG: Well, it was a very rudimentary situation. We were in the basement of the building the Radio City Music Hall at 50 South Ninth Street. At the time I came, the photo lab was in the basement with us in a low-ceilinged newsroom.

The chemical fumes from the film processor dominated the room along with, of course, in those days, everyone was smoking. So it was not a good work environment. Yet we persevered in what I would describe, generously, I suppose, as really the golden age of television news.

In those days, in the '70s and '80s, great journalism was produced by great journalists. I was able to rub shoulders and learn from some of the very best people in the business.

CATHY WURZER: Thank you for that overview. And I'm wondering, when you first arrived, as you say, you were rubbing shoulders with some high-powered journalists. But the ratings, you were behind KSTP. What happened to catapult WCCO into number one back in the '60s?

RON HANDBERG: I think if there was one single event, it was the introduction of a program called the Scene Tonight at 10 o'clock.

SPEAKER 1: From WCCO Television News, the Northwest Communications Center, this is the Scene Tonight in color with Dave Moore, Bud Kraehling, Hal Scott, and Skip Loescher with Action News. Brought to you in part by Conoco, direct service mileage gasoline.

DAVE MOORE: Good evening, everyone. The Scene Tonight moves from the Minneapolis mall to a small Indiana highway. We'll go with federal agents out on narcotics raid. George Rice talks on the sales tax. Action News solves a pesky safety problem. And Hal Scott takes us golfing already. But the top news is Lyndon Johnson in his state of the union message. The president promised to persevere in Vietnam while searching for peace.

RON HANDBERG: My predecessor is News Director Joe Bartelme. And I produced what turned out to be a 45-minute newscast in an environment that normally the 10 o'clock newscasts were a half an hour, very clearly delineated between 10 to 12 minutes of news, three or four minutes of weather, and five to seven minutes of sports.

Well, The Scene Tonight really did away with all that and made it a very integrated newscast, if you would, with a lot of interplay between the news anchors and the sports and weather people. And it really it really changed the marketplace, I guess.

CATHY WURZER: Because, as you say, that was so unusual to have these guys interacting on the air together. They, obviously, liked each other, and it was pretty entertaining.

RON HANDBERG: Yes. It gave us the opportunity to do longer stories. I can just give you one example. Don Kladstrup did a seven-minute piece called Living with Death, which was the exploration of a young boy's fight to stay alive. And that came in the middle of the Scene Tonight. It would have never happened in a traditional newscast.

And somehow the audience took to this new format. The ratings were really turned around, and TCO became the dominant 10:00 newscast.

CATHY WURZER: Led by a young man at that time by the name of Dave Moore. And for younger people who are not familiar with Dave, how would you describe him?

RON HANDBERG: As the most, maybe the most marvelous man I've ever met. He had a strong sense of news. He breathed meaning into my words. He brought my words alive as no other person that I've ever written for was able to do.

DAVE MOORE: Good evening. Tonight on More on Sunday, we bring you the year 1973. Some of you may have had enough of it already. Overall, it was not a good year. The environment went out, and a new phenomenon called the energy crisis came in. The cost of living soared while wages sort of stumbled along. On the national scene, American combat in Vietnam came to an end, and our POWs returned. An office building in Washington called the Watergate became a household word. A former Michigan congressman, Gerald Ford, became the new vice president.

RON HANDBERG: In addition to that, of course, he was so human in his interactions with anyone else that he dealt with on the set. He earned a reputation, a well-deserved reputation, as an icon in this market. But he could also be a very funny guy.

CATHY WURZER: And he was funny. I mean, he, for folks who are not familiar, he had I don't what you want-- a parody, I guess, the Bedtime News, which was, I would say, kind of a precursor in a sense to Saturday Night Live.

RON HANDBERG: I think that's true. Of course, as a serious journalist or as serious journalists, we, for the record, kind of frowned on it because it made fun of the news in so many ways. Of course, it was hilarious and furthered Dave's reputation and accessibility, I suppose.

But it also spoke to how clever he was because he produced the Bedtime News himself with all kinds of photographic tricks, technological twists. It became, in a way, Dave Moore's signature.

SPEAKER 2: Now the Bedtime News presented against its better judgment, but nevertheless with the best wishes of the Sealy Mattress Company.

DAVE MOORE: And if I'm having trouble thanking you, I am rendered numb in finding ways to thank the Sealy Mattress Company. Not once have they complained about the liberties we've taken with their mattresses. Of course, a lot of people have taken liberties.

[LAUGHTER]

So just as we do on the legitimate 6 and 10 o'clock newscast, we'll report some of the day's news in between the commercials. There--

RON HANDBERG: But it was hilarious. And as you suggested, it was a precursor to a lot of very funny late night shows.

CATHY WURZER: Right. I'm glad you brought up a list of kind of a who's who of journalists who started at WCCO and then went on to fame and fortune at CBS and ABC, I mean, the big-time network. When you think of journalism, WCCO is like big J journalism, More on Sunday, those More on Sunday shows really got to dive into some meaty topics. Reporters were doing award-winning work.

Where did that come from in terms of the edict to do that kind of work? Who led that charge?

RON HANDBERG: Part of it, Cathy, I think, should also be explained that WCCO television in those days was locally owned by the Murphy and McNally families who gave the newsroom complete authority to do what it would do. And that led to the Moore report, to More on Sunday, investigative reports, the I-team, things that had never been done on local television before and which were very costly to do in terms of the number of staff people, the kind of abuse that the station took from some of the people that those programs attacked, if you will.

We were determined to produce the very best journalism we could. We got into great trouble with some corporate giants in this community with some of the investigative reporting we did. And upper management and the ownership of the station had to absorb that kind of criticism, and they have my everlasting gratitude for what they did and what they allowed us to do.

CATHY WURZER: There was a lot of hard work that was done, absolutely And you were kind of at the leading edge of all the changes, Ron Handberg. But did you have fun?

RON HANDBERG: Absolutely. Absolutely. The newsrooms were so open to laughter and to self-criticism. Friendships were deep and continuing 'til to this day, 30 some years later. I miss the days in the newsroom, and the laughs, and the jokes, and also the serious attention to trying to do our jobs.

CATHY WURZER: Ron Handberg, thank you for looking back on a storied career at a storied TV station like WCCO. Thank you so much for everything you've done.

RON HANDBERG: Thanks very much, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: That was former WCCO-TV general manager Ron Handberg.