Outlet profile

CBS Minnesota

U.S. center-left

Owned byOwned and operated by CBS News and Stations, a division of CBS Broadcasting Inc., which is controlled by Paramount Global (now Paramount Skydance following the 2025 merger with Skydance Media)

FundingPrimarily advertising revenue from local and national television spots; no subscription or public funding

On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

WCCO-TV traces its roots to a Minneapolis radio station that signed on in 1925 and was later owned by Twin Cities Newspapers. On July 1, 1949, the company launched WTCN-TV, Minnesota's second television station. In 1952, Twin Cities Newspapers sold its broadcast properties; the Murphy and McNally families merged the television outlet with WCCO radio, recently acquired from CBS, and renamed it WCCO-TV with CBS as a minority partner. The FCC forced CBS to sell its stake in 1954 due to ownership limits, but CBS fully reacquired WCCO-TV in 1992 for roughly $178.6 million, converting it into a full CBS owned-and-operated station. A series of corporate mergers followed: in 2019 CBS Corporation and Viacom recombined to form ViacomCBS, which renamed itself Paramount Global in 2022, and in 2025 Paramount merged with Skydance Media. Media Bias/Fact Check rates WCCO–CBS Minnesota as left-center in political orientation with strong factual reporting, and AllSides places its parent network CBS News in the lean-left category. The station has long been one of the dominant local news voices in the Twin Cities, and it continues to cover Minnesota-specific angles on federal policy—immigration enforcement, mining near the Boundary Waters, and constitutional questions around executive orders—in a straightforward news format that generally does not editorialize in favor of the current administration.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-07-16; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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