Iowa TV Gets Its Close-Up, Enjoying Outsize Influence

Broadcasting from Iowa’s capital city to 434,500 TV households in the country’s 72nd largest television market, KCCI takes on outsize importance among the nation’s local television stations every four years.

Iowans are the first in the nation to vote in presidential caucuses, setting the tone for the rest of the campaign season. As a result, presidential candidates devote significant face time to KCCI, the perennial market leader and one of 30 stations owned by Hearst, and its rival WHO-HD, the local NBC affiliate. And the stations respond in kind, adding more political coverage to the menu of news offerings.