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Four years after Iowa State University sold WOI-TV to Capital Communications, station manager Bill Bradley still gets the questions.
"I'll say, 'I'm going to work' and they'll say, 'You're going to your office in Ames?' " Bradley says.
Of course, WOI isn't in Ames anymore. It moved to the east side of downtown Des Moines shortly after the sale. Now it's moving again, to a spacious building on Westown Parkway in West Des Moines.
Bradley hopes publicity about the move and the station's updated news studio will convince viewers that Channel 5 is a Des Moines station. "I think this will be the final piece in that, and people will realize we're in Des Moines."
They should have already. But WOI, dead last in the local TV news ratings, is still an Ames station in the minds of many viewers.
"People still view WOI as a university station run by students," says Dana Cardin, assistant news director at KCCI-TV. 'They were an Ames station, but now they're a Des Moines station. That positioning can only help them for the future."
Bradley and others at WOI are hoping many things besides the move will help the station in the future. February ratings showed Channel 5's 10 p.m. newscast having a 5 percent share of the market, while Channel 13 had a 31 percent share and Channel 8 had a 43 percent share.
The picture at 5 p.m. is just as dismal. Channel 5 brings up the rear with a 7 percent share, while Channel 13 has 21 percent and Channel 8 38 percent.
There's no comparison at 6 p.m., because WOI chose to drop its 6 o'clock newscast in favor of old "MASH" reruns. Ironically, "MASH" gets far better ratings than the news did. "Not exactly a ringing endorsement of your product," says WHO-TV news director Al Setka.
KCCI and WHO are among the national leaders in market share for their 10 p.m. broadcasts. That's at the expense of WOI, which has fewer viewers at 10 p.m. than the other stations do on their morning news programs.
"News tends to be the cash cow at stations," Setka says. Indeed, it's normal for most stations to bring in half of their revenue from news. But the...