WUCW (channel 23) is a television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, serving the Twin Cities area as an affiliate of The CW.

Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station maintains studios in the Pence Building on 8th Street and Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis, and its transmitter is located at the Telefarm site in Shoreview.

Channel 23 was established as KTMA in 1982, airing a mix of commercial and subscription television programming; three years later, it became a full-time independent station.

During this period, it became famous for originating the cult cable television series Mystery Science Theater 3000, which began as a locally produced program.

[15] In addition to advertiser-supported programs, KTMA carried Spectrum, the subscription service owned by Buford's Home Entertainment Network (HEN) division.

[18] That summer, United agreed to buy Buford's 80 percent ownership of KTMA for $7.5 million[17] while also writing down the Home Entertainment Network division and putting the three STV systems on the market.

Further, a federal judge had ruled against the Twins and North Stars pooling their broadcast rights in the Spectrum deal after WCCO-TV sued on antitrust charges.

[20]) In August 1985, the Twins and North Stars opted not to renew their Spectrum rights deal, a decision that sounded the death knell for the service, already down to just 13,000 subscribers.

[24] O'Connor purchased another $2.5 million in equipment and changed KTMA to a more traditional general entertainment station, acquiring a number of older syndicated programs such as The Andy Griffith Show and Laurel and Hardy.

[25] A late 1986 billboard campaign centered around Elvira's Movie Macabre ended prematurely after the station received a dozen complaints over the slogan "features that will scare you to death".

[32] The first signs of financial trouble also occurred that year: KTMA had to temporarily stop carrying some programs in August because it needed to refinance to pay its syndicators in a timely fashion.

[36] The Minnesota Independent Network would give KTMA and KXLI the regional circulation necessary to compete with other Twin Cities-market stations for viewers and programming rights.

[38] A phone line Mallon established specifically for MST3K viewers netted such a favorable response[40] that KTMA increased their show order from 13 episodes to 21.

[42] Unlike all future iterations of the show, the jokes provided by Hodgson and company during the course of a movie were ad libbed with a production cycle of less than 24 hours.

Cloud radio station that KTMA and the owner of KXLI and KXLT (which had gone silent awaiting the network's launch) had "bigger fish to fry" and blamed the complexity of the arrangement for scuttling the plan.

[43] The nature of his remarks was explained at the end of the month, when the station filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, with O'Connor noting that KTMA had been undercapitalized from the moment he had purchased it.

[49] It was not until the fall of 1991 that two groups emerged seeking to buy the station out of Chapter 11, at the same time that the court-appointed trustee fired O'Connor in a cost-cutting effort.

The successful bidder, Lakeland Group Television, was headed by Linda Rios Brook, who had resigned from her position as general manager of KARE—reportedly over her conservative religious beliefs—and planned to reposition the station with Christian programs.

[52] KLGT picked up a package of 14 Twins games previously aired by KITN in 1994; they had been jettisoned by channel 29 due to increasing commitments to Fox network programming.

[56] In late 1997, Sinclair Broadcast Group entered into a deal to purchase KLGT for $52.5 million—a far cry from the $3.3 million[51] spent to acquire it six years prior.

[70][71][72] As part of the SAFER Act, WUCW kept its analog signal on the air for 30 days to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.