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 the Tegna subsidiary of Nexstar Media Group alongside CW station KCWI-TV (channel 23); Nexstar also owns NBC affiliate WHO-DT (channel 13). WOI-DT and KCWI-TV 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 two new stations sprang up in Des Moines: WHO-TV in 1954 and KRNT-TV (now KCCI) in 1955. These stations took NBC and CBS programming, respectively, along with local news viewership and considerable advertising business. While the Board of Regents permitted WOI-TV to accept local advertising in 1955, it did not employ its own advertising sales representatives and purposely throttled the operation to avoid allegations of unfair competition. These and other factors left the station in a very distant third place in central Iowa news ratings for decades.
Debate over the privatization of state government functions renewed the long-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. Nexstar merged with Tegna in 2026 and was granted a waiver to retain all three stations, but a subsequent court-ordered injunction has barred further integration.
Iowa State University ownership Construction and freeze-era operation Iowa State College's involvement in broadcasting had dated to the earliest days of the medium. An amateur radio station had been set up in 1914, which turned into a full broadcasting station on November 21, 1921. Known initially as 9YL, it received the call sign WOI in April 1922. Originally part of the electrical engineering department, it became part of the college proper in 1925 and a major source of educational, agricultural, and sports information in the state.
Under president Charles E. Friley, in 1944, the college formed a commission to investigate the possibilities in the new medium of television. On February 13, 1945, it applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a construction permit for a new commercial television station to operate on channel 3, 66–72 MHz. The commission granted this application on September 19, 1946, by which time that channel had been redesignated channel 4.
The timing of events beyond Iowa made the WOI-TV construction permit of extra importance to central Iowa. In October 1948, the FCC declared a freeze on grants for new television stations. Only two permits had been granted in Iowa before the freeze, for WOI-TV and WOC-TV (now KWQC-TV) in Davenport. Even so, not even "a nickel" had been appropriated to build the station, per a college spokesman as of December 1948. A major step came in July 1949, when WOI-FM began broadcasting on 90.1 MHz from a new tower. By November, about half the equipment had arrived at the Iowa State College campus and the tower south of campus. The first test pattern was broadcast January 24, 1950, as was a film. On February 21, 1950, WOI-TV made its first regular broadcast. It was the first station in Central Iowa, the second in Iowa (after WOC-TV), and the 100th in the United States. Of equal significance, it was the first television station licensed to a college.
Iowa State was engaged in the war effort, producing uranium for the Manhattan Project, and received a 5-percent overhead on money used for war research; this money is known to have been a funding source for the station. This money also was used to fund the purchase of scientific equipment by the college.
From the beginning, WOI-TV was a different kind of venture from the WOI radio stations. State officials believed that the state-owned radio stations should not compete with commercial outlets and thus ran them on a non-commercial basis. However, WOI-TV found itself in an unusual position. The four national television networks—ABC, CBS, DuMont, and NBC—had no other outlet for their programs in Ames or Des Moines, and the station held affiliations with all of them when it launched. On September 30, 1950, the station began presenting network programs live. The Iowa state board of education adopted a "semi-commercial" posture to the operation of WOI-TV, initially as a stopgap. It allowed the station to take in revenue from national advertising contained in network programs, but the station was not permitted to sell ad time to Iowa businesses or have local time sales representatives. The concept was to create an income source for additional equipment and improvements for WOI-TV's operation. The station also barred some categories of national advertisers, notably beer and wine; dairy farmers protested when it aired margarine spots. At the time the semi-commercial policy was adopted, the posture was that this would last until TV stations were established in Des Moines, at which time WOI-TV would become a non-commercial service like its sister stations. In spite of the restrictions placed on advertising, WOI-TV turned an operating profit in 1951—primarily derived from income from network programming—all of which was offset by capital expenditures. Among these was a studio-transmitter link to connect the transmitter with the Service Building on the Iowa State campus so that equipment could be moved from the transmitter site to the same building as WOI radio. The station moved from the Service Building to Exhibit Hall on the Iowa State campus in 1952.
After the freeze: New channel number, new competition The years-long FCC freeze on new station applications ended April 14, 1952, with major changes to television allocations, including the addition of ultra high frequency (UHF) channels to the existing 12 in the very high frequency (VHF) band and new station spacing requirements. The FCC's order had two immediate repercussions for WOI-TV. It reaffirmed that the station was a commercial license by failing to reserve the channel for educational broadcasting. It made a total of 30 changes to the channels of existing stations, including WOI-TV, which would be moved from channel 4 to channel 5. This change was carried out in June 1953. The station left channel 4 after its June 26 broadcasts with the intention of returning the next day on channel 5 at double the effective radiated power. Instead, technicians battled unexpected setbacks in the installation of a new antenna, including a broken winch and damage as it was raised to its position atop the tower. In the heat of the Iowa summer, sightseers jammed local roads to watch the work be done; the station returned to the air on June 29. On January 30, 1954, WOI-TV boosted its power again to the maximum of 100,000 watts.
The end of the freeze also meant television stations for Des Moines. The first of these was in the new UHF band: KGTV (channel 17), which debuted on November 15, 1953, as a basic affiliate of ABC plus additional shows from CBS and DuMont. Its lineup of network shows included some popular offerings that WOI-TV passed on because of its policy of not accepting beer sponsors, such as Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, Person to Person, and CBS's Wednesday night boxing coverage. In April 1954, WHO-TV (channel 13) signed on as an NBC affiliate, taking with it the NBC shows WOI-TV had been carrying. KGTV quit airing network programming in March 1955 before going off the air altogether the next month; its owner, Rib Mountain Radio, in part blamed WOI-TV's continued commercial operation. The other commercial VHF channel for the city was activated in July 1955 by KRNT-TV (channel 8, now KCCI); it was a full CBS affiliate, making WOI-TV a full ABC affiliate except for beer-sponsor programs. The station also retained its affiliation with DuMont, which ceased its existence as a network later that year.
With WOI-TV now one of three VHF stations, each with its own network affiliation, serving central Iowa viewers, the Iowa Board of Regents approved on November 11, 1955, that WOI-TV continue to operate on a commercial basis. Citing the need for a steady income source for the station, the board removed the local advertising restriction but retained the bar on alcoholic beverage sponsors. The station had been taking advertising from "regional" accounts that included Iowa and other states. The Board of Regents's decision was met poorly by Iowa's private commercial broadcasters. The Iowa Broadcasters Association called on the state to defund WOI-TV, and the chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party suggested selling WOI-TV to private interests and using the proceeds to build out a state-owned educational television network. While WHO-TV and KRNT-TV became major competitors, WOI-TV suffered financially. It lost money in four consecutive fiscal years, further exacerbated by its schedule of educational broadcasts, which did not generate revenue. Iowa State College was renamed Iowa State University of Science and Technology (ISU) on July 4, 1959.
Educational programming on WOI-TV