Former KCCO-TV Tower Demolished

Posted on by Jon Ellis

Part of western Minnesota TV history came crashing to the ground this spring.

The former tower of now-deleted KCCO-TV/7 (Alexandria) near Westport was brought down in a controlled demolition on April 18. The video was later posted to YouTube:

FCC records indicate the tower that was demolished was KCCO-TV’s original 1,000-foot tower constructed in 1958.

As previously reported here, KCCO-TV went silent at the end of 2017 after CBS sold its bandwidth in the FCC’s spectrum auction for $9,987,598. The channel 7 spectrum has not been reallocated to any other station.

Hubbard Broadcasting’s KIKV/100.7 (Sauk Centre-Alexandria) had previously transmitted from the KCCO tower but moved to the nearby tower of KSAX/42 (Alexandria), which is also owned by Hubbard.

KCCO had most recently acted as a satellite of WCCO-TV (Minneapolis), which is now carried on a translator in Alexandria with a much smaller coverage area. The station had originally signed on as standalone NBC/ABC affiliate KCMT-TV in 1958 and was the only station receivable in much of west-central Minnesota at that time.

This ad for KCMT-TV appeared in the 1958 Broadcasting Yearbook.

KCMT added satellite KNMT/12 (Walker) in 1964, and the stations changed their affiliation to CBS in 1982. However, the station’s ratings began to decline and the Alexandria/Walker market started to lose counties after cable systems and translators brought Minneapolis TV signals to more households in western Minnesota.

Midwest Communications, then the owner of WCCO, bought the stations in 1987 and converted them to semi-satellites as KCCO/KCCW, folding the remaining counties of the Alexandria/Walker market (then #183) into the Minneapolis market. KCCO/KCCW continued a full-length newscast for a few years after the sale, but local news was later reduced to cut-ins and discontinued completely in 2002. Here’s a retrospective the station ran when its 6 p.m. newscast ended:

KCCW, serving north-central Minnesota, is still on the air as a full satellite of WCCO. The Alexandria area is still served by Hubbard’s KSAX (a satellite of ABC affiliate KSTP-TV St. Paul), as well as “Pioneer Public Television” (KWCM/10 Appleton) and a number of low-power TV/translator systems. “Kool TV” launched several years ago on Alexandria’s Selective TV LPTV system carrying local news and sports broadcasts.