Programming
KSTP clears most ABC network programming. In the late 1970s, KSTP was the base for Country Day, a half-hour weekday agricultural news program that aired on a "network" of stations in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Steve Edstrom was the main host. From 1982 to 1994, when nationally syndicated talk shows started ruling the daytime airwaves, KSTP ran a talk program of its own called Good Company, that was hosted by married couple Sharon Anderson and Steve Edelman. Both of them had appeared briefly in the movie Fargo as TV hosts, and continue to be recognized as area celebrities from time to time. Currently, Edelman runs Edelman Productions, a company that produces series for Food Network, HGTV, History and DIY Network, with his wife Anderson hosting a few of them. Edelman Productions is headquartered in California where both Edelman and Anderson now live, but it has offices both in California and Minnesota, where they produce their shows.
In 2007, KSTP decided to bring back an hour-long afternoon talk program similar to Good Company. Twin Cities Live, described as "a show about Minnesotans created by Minnesotans", began airing on April 21, 2008, and airs weekdays at 3 p.m.[9] A public casting call at the Mall of America attracted a Burnsville, Minnesota native, John Hanson, who was selected from over 500 people. A few months later, former Milwaukee news anchor Rebekah Wood was hired as his partner. Wood was replaced by Elizabeth Ries on June 15, 2009. Ries and Hanson co-hosted together for over three years until Hanson received an offer to become the program director of KCSP in Kansas City.[10] Hanson's last day on Twin Cities Live was December 21, 2012. Over the next four months, numerous television personalities served as guest co-hosts on TCL until the producers could find the best fit. KSTP weekend anchor Chris Egert was chosen to be Ries' new co-host on April 29, 2013.[11] Egert and Ries co-hosted the show for nine months until Egert was promoted to weekday morning news anchor in February 2014.[12] The station again had to go through a process of finding the next co-host, this time taking five months. On July 21, 2014, Steve Patterson was named the new co-host of TCL.[13] Ries is the current host of Twin Cities Live. On April 16, 2018, close to ten years after the program first hit the airwaves, Twin Cities Live was expanded to 90 minutes to include an extra half-hour at 4 p.m. called Twin Cities Live at Four, also hosted by Patterson and Ries. The extra half-hour replaced Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (which was canceled in May 2019) which was moved to 2 p.m. Patterson left Twin Cities Live in 2021.
The title Twin Cities Live was first used from 1985 to 1991 for a short-lived morning talk show that debuted at a time when KSTP was trying to reinvent its news image. The other talk show that aired on KSTP-TV is Live with Kelly and Ryan, which was on KSTP for 33 years beginning in the late 1980s under prior hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Regis Philbin and ending in 2021, when it moved to KARE.
During the trial of Derek Chauvin, KSTP launched a digital subchannel showing the court feed without commentary.[14]
News operation
KSTP-TV presently broadcasts 37 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with six hours each weekday and 3 1/2 hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). In addition, the station produces a political discussion show called At Issue, which is hosted by Tom Hauser, and Sports Wrap, a sports highlight program that airs on Sunday evenings at 10:45 p.m. and on special occasions, such as when KSTP airs ESPN Monday Night Football telecasts featuring the Minnesota Vikings, or the final game of the NBA Finals. The station formerly ran a Friday night edition of the program focusing on high school sports that aired from September through May. These segments were usually hosted by Rod Simons and Anne Hutchinson, but Simons was later fired by the station in 2008 and Hutchinson also was let go in December of that year. A week prior to Hutchinson's departure, High School Sports Wrap was canceled due to low revenues.[15] For much of the time since the 1980s, KQRS-FM morning show host Tom Barnard has served as the station's voice-over announcer.
A longtime trademark of the station is the use of the letter "V" in Morse code (standing for 'victory') as a sonic identity, a hallmark of Stanley E. Hubbard's operation of the KSTP stations since World War II, when he held an interest in teaching Morse code to his listening audience.[16][17]
