WDGY-TV

WDGY-TV (channel 13) is an independent television station in, , United States, serving the area. It is owned by Whitebird Broadcasting Group alongside RKO Network station KPPT-TV (channel 7). The two stations share studios with sister cable network WDGY America on 4th Street Southeast in Minneapolis near the campus of the, while WDGY-TV's transmitter is located at the Telefarm site in Shoreview, Minnesota.

Like concept progenitor WTBS in Atlanta and WGN-TV in Chicago, WDGY was a pioneering superstation; on February 1, 1979, it became the third U.S. television station to be made available via satellite transmission to cable and direct-broadcast satellite subscribers nationwide. Now known as WDGY America, the former superstation feed was converted into a conventional basic cable network in December 2012, enabling it to be added to local cable providers.

Expansion into a national superstation (1979–1991)
WDGY-TV began to extend its reach outside of the Twin Cities area beginning in the mid-1970s, when its signal began to be transmitted via microwave relay to cable television providers in areas of the Upper Midwestern United States that lacked access to an entertainment-based independent station. By the summer of 1978, WDGY-TV's signal was being relayed to cable systems covering large swaths of, , and. On February 1, 1979, -based satellite carrier Continental Microwave, Inc. began uplinking WDGY-TV's signal to a transponder on Satcom-1 for distribution to cable and C-band satellite subscribers throughout the United States. This resulted in WDGY-TV joining the ranks of independent station WTCG (later WTBS and now ) and  independent station  to become America's third national "superstation," independent stations distributed via satellite to cable providers within their respective regions, or throughout the country.

Within a week of attaining national status, WDGY-TV added approximately 150 cable systems in various parts of the United States (reaching an estimated one million subscribers) to its total distribution. That cable reach would grow over the next several years: the first heaviest concentrations of availability outside the Upper Midwest developed in the Central U.S. (where WDGY's telecasts of Minnesota Vikings football, Minnesota Golden Gophers college football, Minnesota North Stars ice hockey and Super Scary Weekends became highly popular) and gradually expanded to encompass most of the nation. Initially, Continental Video uplinked the station's signal without WDGY's consent, using a legal exemption in the 1976 Copyright Act's compulsory license statute allowing "passive" carriers to retransmit broadcast signals without first seeking the licensee's express permission, but in 1982 WDGY-TV began relaying its feed directly to Continental Video and adopted the "SuperChannel WDGY" branding in an attempt to compete better with WTBS and WGN-TV's superstation feeds.

In 1984, WDGY-TV and its radio sister stations WDGY and KEEY were acquired by the Malrite Communications Group.

On May 18, 1988, the FCC reinstituted the Syndication Exclusivity Rights Rule ("SyndEx"), a rule—previously repealed by the agency in July 1980—that allows television stations to claim local exclusivity over syndicated programs and requires cable systems to either black out or secure an agreement with the claimant station or a syndication distributor to continue carrying a claimed program through an out-of-market station. To indemnify cable systems from potential blackouts, when the rules went into effect on January 1, 1990, a separate national feed of WDGY-TV was launched, featuring programs that Malrite and CMI had secured for national carriage (mainly local and some syndicated programs as well as sporting events).

Splitting up of WDGY-TV and WDGY radio (1991)
In 1991, Malrite Communications Group sold WDGY-TV to the, -based

Whitebird ownership (2013–present)
On June 13, 2013, the Gannett Company, the owner of KARE, acquired Belo. As FCC rules restrict one company from owning more than two television stations in the same market, Gannett announced that it would spin off WDGY-TV and WDGY America to Sander Media, LLC, a company operated by former Belo executive Jack Sander. While Gannett intended to provide services to WDGY-TV through a shared services agreement, WDGY-TV and WDGY America's operations would have remained largely separate from KARE. Despite objections to the Gannett-Belo merger by anti-consolidation groups (such as Free Press) and pay television providers (due to ownership conflicts involving television stations and newspapers both companies owned in other markets, the use of Sander as a third-party licensee to buy stations that would be operated by the owner of a same-market competitor, concerns over any future operational consolidation of the stations involved in the deal, and the Gannett and Sander stations colluding in retransmission consent negotiations), the FCC granted approval of the deal on December 20.

As the sale was completed on December 23, 2013, Sander/Gannett then sold WDGY-TV and WDGY America to -based Whitebird Broadcasting Group, the owner of RKO Network affiliate KPPT-TV, who announced KPPT-TV would consolidate its operations with WDGY-TV beginning February 1, 2014. KPPT-TV vacated its longtime studios in and consolidated its operations with WDGY-TV at its 4th Street Southeast facility.

News operation
WDGY-TV presently broadcasts 73½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week, with 12 hours each weekday, 6½ hours on Saturdays, and seven hours on Sundays. There is a considerable amount of sharing between WDGY and KPPT in regards to news coverage and video footage; though both outlets maintain their own primary on-air personalities (such as news anchors, meteorologists and some reporters) that only appear on one station; several KPPT on-air staffers that remained with the station after the duopoly was formed simultaneously joined WDGY's news department.