WCCO: May We Help You Today?

English: The WCCO building in downtown Minneapolis, 2006 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

WCCO-TV (CBS 4), in its never-ending quest to promote itself to death, recently revived a onetime Twin Cities icon in its version of the Northwestern Bank Weatherball.  Erected atop its Nicollet Mall studios in downtown Minneapolis, the Weather Watcher (as they're calling it) lights the skyline with the CBS eye atop the letters WCCO.

Much like the original Weatherball (more on that later), the Eyeball (as we're calling it) flashes the current conditions this way:  Red is for warmer weather.  Blue is for cooler weather.  Green is for snow or rain.  White is for no change.

If you've spent more than enough time in Minnesota, you know that weather is a big deal here.  So the local TV stations have resorted to gimmicks to make their weathercasts stand out.  It's not enough to get the First Forecast on the air following breaking news coverage of a cat being rescued from a tree, or seeing who has the biggest Doppler radar.  KARE-TV (NBC 11) has had a Backyard for three decades, for the perverse pleasure of watching their meteorologists brave the elements.  WCCO has added a rooftop studio adjacent to their Eyeball in belated response.

Not to get all "Lost Twin Cities" on you, but a little history is in order.  The original Weatherball was introduced in 1949 by Northwestern National Bank on top of its downtown Minneapolis headquarters.  It stood twelve stories, or 157 feet tall, according to the website forgottenminnesota.com   Eventually, the bank's catchy jingle (first on radio, then TV) created enough awareness and business to warrant little Weatherballs at their branches all over town.

The Weatherball stood for more than three decades until Thanksgiving 1982.  That was when fire destroyed an entire block of downtown Minneapolis, including Northwestern Bank and Donaldsons department store.  The ball, which miraculously survived the fire, was moved to the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.  It sat there for 17 years before being consigned to the junk heap.

By 1983, Northwestern Bank had become Norwest, with a big green 'N' for its logo.  They merged with Wells Fargo in 1998, which has an icon of its own with a stagecoach and a team of horses.  That burned-out hulk has since been rebuilt as one of the tallest buildings in Minneapolis, and is now known as Wells Fargo Tower.

So there it stands, the WCCO Eyeball--ahem, Weather Watcher, taking its place with the Foshay Tower,   IDS Center and Mary Tyler Moore statue among the landmarks of downtown Minneapolis.  It might serve as great promotion for a TV station that hardly needs it.  But in this age when checking the weather is literally in the palm of your hand, who's gonna look at an eye in the sky?