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|---|---|
| City | Ames, Iowa |
| Channels | |
| Branding | Local 5; Local 5 News |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| KCWI-TV | |
| History | |
First air date | February 21, 1950 |
Former call signs | WOI-TV (1950–2009) |
Former channel number(s) |
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Call sign meaning | Taken from WOI radio |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 8661 |
| ERP | 13.9 kW |
| HAAT | 566 m (1,857 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 41°48′33″N 93°36′54″W / 41.80917°N 93.61500°W |
| Translator(s) | |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | www |
WOI-DT (channel 5) is a television station licensed to Ames, Iowa, United States, serving the Des Moines area as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside CW affiliate KCWI-TV (channel 23), also licensed to Ames. The two stations share studios on Westown Parkway in West Des Moines; WOI-DT's transmitter is located in Alleman, Iowa.
WOI-TV was Iowa's second television station and the first TV station owned by an educational institution when it was built by Iowa State College, now Iowa State University (ISU); it signed on February 21, 1950, on channel 4. It operated from studios on the campus in Ames. The foresight of president Charles E. Friley to expand Iowa State's long-running WOI radio station into television led to a very early application and allowed the college to beat a years-long freeze on new TV stations. While WOI-TV was intended as an educational service and aired college courses, agricultural extension programs, and the long-running children's show The Magic Window, the freeze left it the only TV station in central Iowa, and the Iowa Board of Regents allowed it to accept national network programming and advertising. After the freeze, WOI-TV was moved to channel 5, and new stations sprang up in Des Moines. As a result of the advent of KRNT-TV (now KCCI) and WHO-TV, WOI-TV lost considerable advertising business as well as NBC and CBS programming. To counteract the lost revenue, the Board of Regents permitted WOI-TV to accept local advertising in 1955, though it did not employ its own advertising sales representatives. For decades, WOI-TV existed between commercial broadcasting and university ownership; the federal government ruled its activities were subject to income tax, and there were sporadic calls for ISU to sell WOI-TV to a private entity. With the station deliberately kept from being an aggressive competitor and perceptions that it was a training ground for university students and not a Des Moines station, the station sank to a distant third in local news ratings.
Debate over the privatization of state government functions renewed the touchy question of WOI-TV's operational status in the mid-1980s. In 1987, WOI-TV was placed under separate management within the university and encouraged to turn a profit. The sales force was expanded and some of the news staff moved to Des Moines to improve the station's competitive standing, but ratings failed to meaningfully rise, and increased revenues came in below projections. In 1991, ISU president Martin C. Jischke recommended WOI-TV be sold, in spite of a down market for commercial TV stations. This was opposed by local residents who felt that WOI-TV was a resource to ISU and a valuable training ground for broadcast professionals. The bidding process was partly mishandled, leading the original winning bidder to withdraw from the process. The regents agreed to a $14 million offer from Citadel Communications in 1992; Citadel overcame an adverse ruling in court and an attempt by the Iowa legislature to stop the transaction and took control on February 28, 1994. It chose not to rehire 20 employees, canceled The Magic Window, and began migrating station operations and some newscast production to Des Moines. In 1998, the entire station relocated to the present studios in West Des Moines. In spite of multiple rebrands and efforts to improve the news product, WOI continued to find itself a very distant third in the ratings and struggled to change viewers' perceptions of the station.
Citadel sold its Iowa stations to Nexstar Broadcasting Group in 2013. Under Nexstar, the station rebranded again as Local 5 in 2015. It also gained a duopoly partner when the company closed on its purchase of KCWI-TV in 2016. When Nexstar acquired Tribune Media in 2019, it opted to retain the higher-rated WHO and sold WOI and KCWI to Tegna.
- ^ "Facility Technical Data for WOI-DT". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.