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. Both stations share studios on Westown Parkway in West Des Moines, while WOI-DT's transmitter is located in Alleman, Iowa.
In addition to its own digital signal, WOI-DT is simulcast in high definition on KCWI-TV's fifth digital subchannel, using virtual channel 5.5.
History
Early history
WOI-TV signed on the air on February 21, 1950. It was Iowa's second television station (following WOC-TV, now KWQC-TV, in Davenport), and the first in the Des Moines area. Originally on channel 4, it moved to channel 5 in 1952 because of interference with WHBF-TV in the Quad Cities. Programming came from ABC, CBS, NBC, and the DuMont network during the station's early years, but it was a primary CBS affiliate. NBC disappeared from the schedule when WHO-TV (channel 13) signed on in 1954, and CBS disappeared when KRNT-TV (channel 8, now KCCI) signed on in 1955 owing to KRNT radio's long affiliation with CBS radio, leaving channel 5 an exclusive ABC affiliate. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network.
WOI-TV was originally owned by Iowa State University in Ames along with its noncommercial WOI radio stations (AM 640 and FM 90.1), making it the first commercial television station in the United States to be owned by a major college (today, only two commercial TV stations are owned by public universities: KOMU-TV in Columbia, Missouri, and WVUA-CD/WVUA in Tuscaloosa, Alabama). As such, it carried some educational programming from sign-on until the Des Moines Public Schools signed on KDPS-TV (channel 11, now KDIN-TV) in 1959. The startup costs for WOI-TV were paid by the remaining monies from a federal grant awarded to the university for work on the Manhattan Project. WOI's facilities were used by the university to deliver lectures by satellite.
Sale to Citadel Communications
On June 17, 1992, the Iowa Board of Regents voted to sell WOI-TV to Capital Communications Company, a joint venture between Citadel Communications (unrelated to radio station owner Citadel Broadcasting) and Connecticut's Lynch Corporation, for $14 million. The Board of Regents immediately faced a lawsuit filed by "Iowans for WOI-TV, Inc." opposing the sale and arguing that the station was a benefit to the university. On March 1, 1994, WOI-TV was finally sold, while the university kept the WOI radio stations. Capital moved WOI-TV's studios to a temporary location in Des Moines later that year. In 1998 WOI-TV moved to its current studios.
WOI-TV was home to America's longest running local children's program, The Magic Window. The show ran continuously from 1951 through 1994. The original host (1951–1953) was Joy (Ringham) Munn. Producer Dick Hartzell (Ford Foundation Experimental Programming Development) had two small children and was concerned about the lack of good programs for children. Hartzell asked Joy to assist him in planning a handicraft section for a new program, and soon cast her as host of The Magic Window. Later, it was hosted by Betty Lou Varnum for the last 40 of those years.
In August 2011, comedian Stephen Colbert produced a series of political television ads through his "Colbert Super PAC" to run in Iowa, encouraging Iowans to vote for Texas governor Rick Perry at the 2011 Ames Straw Poll for Republican candidates in the 2012 Presidential election. The ads called for voters to submit the vote for a write-in candidate by spelling Perry's last name "Parry", "with an 'A' for IowA and America." Thus "Rick Parry", would be a fictional candidate. Both KCCI and WHO approved to run the ads while WOI did not, stating that they considered the ads "confusing to viewers." Colbert responded by calling the station out on national television on the August 11 episode of his Comedy Central show The Colbert Report, claiming that station executives "sit in their ivory corn silos and play puppet master with national politics." On the August 15 episode, Colbert issued an apology to WOI general manager/Citadel president Ray Cole for the rant. He went on to challenge the station, which he sarcastically called "Des Moines' News Leader" throughout the saga, to find out the exact number of write-in votes for "Rick Parry" at the Straw Poll and called on the entire weeknight anchor team and intrepid cub reporter Katie Eastman to do so. GOP officials have not released that information and do not intend to. According to filings with the Federal Elections Commission, WOI-DT later donated $1170 to the Colbert Super PAC.