WA011 - TV Heaven 41 (‘Us of America,’ 2017)

Looking back at the Minnesota UHF station that reinvented Nick at Nite

If memory serves, this one came about from a cold pitch: An editor of a slick boutique magazine called Us of America—or maybe it was US of America? I never saw a copy—reached out and asked if I wanted to write something short about the Midwest for a thematic issue. In fact, I had just the thing in my pocket: I’d long been curious about the history of TV Heaven 41, a.k.a. KXLI, a St. Cloud, Minnesota UHF station that in the late eighties became a weird locus of retro cool.