Des Moines Business Record, IA
10-08-06
New look, new name, new beginning
By Jason Hancock
jasonhancock@bpcdm.com
In many people's eyes, WOI-TV will always be seen as college kids playing
television, said Allen Sandubrae, vice president of news for Citadel
Communications Co., the station's parent company.
"We're swimming upstream in the river of old perceptions," he said. "Our product
has consistently gotten better in production values and content, but many people
won't give us a chance."
That bad reputation, which Sandubrae said isn't entirely underserved, forced the
station to say goodbye to its old image and rebrand itself as ABC 5.
"This is our company's flagship station," he said. "We wanted to figure out a way
to turn it around."
And if the station's ratings are any indication, their work is cut out for them. In the
May ratings period, called by some the Super Bowl of ratings battles because it is
the last important indicator of viewership until after the holiday season, WOI
finished a distant third in every news time slot, with the 10 p.m. newscast faring
the worst with a 5 share compared with a 39 share for KCCI and a 25 share for
WHO. A share is the percentage of the TV households watching television at a
given time tuned to a particular program. Those numbers were virtually the same
for the station in the same ratings period last year.
But Sept. 11, the station debuted a new set, a new logo and hopefully,
Sandubrae said, a new beginning.
"If people watch us, they'll like what they see and come back," said Scott
Frederick, news director for ABC 5. "There is no way to absolutely say we have
more viewers now, but we have a lot more letters, e-mails and phone calls than
ever before in the five years that I've been here. I think that says something."
And as viewers get used to the new look, Sandubrae said, in the next few weeks,
they will see another change at the station that will create a "pretty dynamic shift
in the market." Though he wouldn't reveal exactly what that change will be, he
said viewers will notice immediately.
"I can't go into what it is today, but it will create a big shift in the market," he said.
"We're all pretty excited."
The current problems with the station's reputation stems from two factors,
Sandubrae said. The first was the "really bad" coverage the station gave to the
floods of 1993, which Sandubrae said was an opportunity lost.
"We just didn't do a very good job at all," he said. "No one at the station
recognized the magnitude of the event at the time. It was a shame because they
were headquartered in Ames, which meant they should have been the only
station not adversely affected by the floods."
The second factor was the fact that WOI-TV was originally owned by Iowa State
University, making it the first commercial television station in the United States
to be owned by a major college. On March 1, 1994, the Iowa Board of Regents
sold WOI to Citadel Communications while keeping the WOI radio stations.
"There was some controversy over ISU selling the station," Sandubrae said.
"Additionally, the station was solely run out of Ames, which led people to see us
as a school station, a bunch of kids playing TV."
The process of fixing the station's image problem started in 2000.
"We began looking at each piece of the puzzle: the look of the station, the
content, the operations and the promotions," Sandubrae said. "We started with
the content, which I believe is as good as it gets in this area as far as production
values and the news we report."
Then came the idea of changing the station's identity completely.
"The old perception of what WOI was became a problem for us," Sandubrae
said. "We began asking, 'How do we let the viewers of Central Iowa know that
this is not the station you thought you knew?'"
Sandubrae said because WOI's image was so set for most viewers, the station
decided to change the name of the station from top to bottom.
"If you're going to do this, you have to go all out," he said. "We changed the
music to our newscast, the voiceover, stationery, paint jobs on the news vans,
everything. This sends a clear message to the viewers that we have changed."
The station is also banking on the recent strength of the ABC network,
Sandubrae said.
But the visuals of the station aren't the only things that have changed in recent
years.
"We are trying to do much deeper news than the competition," Frederick said.
"We don't just report what happens at the Statehouse; we get out and find the
people affected by that story and talk to them."
Frederick said everyone in the newsroom is happy to put the WOI name behind
them.
"We think we've been doing a good job for years," he said. "Now, we feel like we
are finally going to get people to give us a chance."
The station won't crawl out of third place overnight, Sandubrae said, and even
with the changes, he understands it is hard to change people's viewing habits.
But for everyone at ABC 5, making the station as good as it can possibly be is a
matter of pride.
"Good is not good enough," he said. "Our viewers deserve a product that is
better than good. That is a tough standard to live up to, but that is the only way
we can ever succeed. And our commitment to that is absolute."