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| - 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. WOI-TV was on channel 4 before moving to channel 5 in 1952. 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 signed on in 1954, and CBS disappeared when KRNT-TV (now KCCI) signed on in 1955, leaving channel 5 as the ABC affiliate. During the late 1950s, the station was also briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network.
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| abstract
| - 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. WOI-TV was on channel 4 before moving to channel 5 in 1952. 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 signed on in 1954, and CBS disappeared when KRNT-TV (now KCCI) signed on in 1955, leaving channel 5 as the 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. 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. On June 17, 1992, the Iowa Board of Regents voted to sell WOI-TV to Capital Communications (a joint venture between Citadel Communications (unrelated to radio station owner Citadel Broadcasting) and Connecticut's Lynch Corporation) for $14 million. A lawsuit immediately came against the Board of Regents filed by "Iowans for WOI-TV, Inc." arguing that the station was a benefit to the university in an attempt to expostulate with the university. On March 1, 1994, WOI-TV was finally sold, while the university kept the WOI radio stations, and 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 on Westown Parkway in West Des Moines. WOI-TV was home to America's longest running local children's program, The Magic Window. The show ran continuously from 1951 through 1994, and was hosted by Betty Lou Varnum for all but three of those years. Channel 5 spent many years as a distant third in the market, in part because ABC wasn't on par with CBS or NBC until the 1970s. On September 11, 2006, WOI dropped the Eyewitness News brand (which the station had used for five years) and rebranded itself as "ABC5", using a rendition of the circle logo. For the last three years, the ABC5 Weather team, led by Chief Meteorologist Brad Edwards, has been certified by WeatheRate, an independent weather rating service, as providing, "Central Iowa's Most Accurate Forecast". Edwards was previously an on-air meteorologist for the Weather Channel. On Monday December 1, 2008, WOI-TV launched an affiliation with Retro Television Network on its DT2 subchannel and Mediacom digital cable channel 245.
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