KHNL
KHNL is a television station in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, serving the Hawaiian Islands as an affiliate of NBC and Telemundo. It is owned by Gray Media alongside CBS affiliate KGMB, a combination known as Hawaii News Now. The two stations share studios on Waiakamilo Road in downtown Honolulu; KHNL's transmitter is located in Akupu, Hawaii. KHNL is also rebroadcast on the island of Hawaiʻi, Maui, and Kauaʻi.
The present station on channel 13 began broadcasting July 4, 1962, as KTRG-TV, an independent station owned by the Watumull family. In 1967, Richard Eaton's United Broadcasting Company purchased the station. The call letters were changed to KIKU-TV and the format to primarily Japanese-language shows. In addition to serving Hawaii's Japanese-language community, the station gained notice in the wider market for its telecasts of sumo wrestling as well as tokusatsu series, particularly Android Kikaider.
A general partnership of investors from California and Hawaii, as well as Japan's TV Asahi, acquired KIKU-TV in 1979. In 1981, channel 13 significantly reduced its Japanese-language broadcasting, though it continued to air programs in the language into the 1990s, and became a general-entertainment independent. Under the management of future Honolulu mayor Rick Blangiardi, in 1984 the station renamed itself KHNL; it then added coverage of University of Hawaiʻi athletics as well as an affiliation with Fox in 1986. A limited amount of Japanese-language programming continued to air into the early 1990s, shortly after the Providence Journal Company acquired the station.
In 1994, the acquisition of KHON-TV, Honolulu's number-one station and an NBC affiliate, by Fox-linked SF Broadcasting portended an affiliation switch, which ultimately took place on January 1, 1996, with KHNL changing from Fox to NBC. As a result, in April 1995, KHNL began airing nightly newscasts. Despite luring several high-profile names in local TV news, the station struggled to gain ratings. Providence Journal merged with Belo Corporation in 1997; Belo then divested KHNL to Raycom Media in 1999. Raycom led the consolidation of KHNL and KGMB's news into Hawaii News Now in 2009; the combination became a serious challenger to KHON-TV, primarily on the strength of KGMB's existing news viewership. Gray acquired Raycom in 2019.
Channel 13 in the 1950s
Channel 13 was the last of Honolulu's original five TV allocations to receive any interest, even though channels 2 and 4 each had two applicants. Territorial Telecasters, a group linked to radio woman Christmas Early, filed for the channel in December 1952, only to abandon its bid within months and formally withdraw it in June.In October 1956, industrialist Henry J. Kaiser applied for channel 13 after also requesting authority to build a new Honolulu radio station. The Federal Communications Commission granted a construction permit in December, but this was stayed between January and April 1957 following a protest by KULA-TV on economic grounds.
On May 5, 1957, KHVH-TV began broadcasting on channel 13. Airing from Kaiser's Hawaiian Village Hotel, it was the first station to broadcast color television in Hawaii. KHVH-TV was an independent station that lacked network affiliation or even a studio camera; it was primarily a movie station, scheduling three to four feature films a day. In May 1958, Kaiser acquired KULA-TV; the two stations merged as KHVH-TV on channel 4, retaining KULA-TV's affiliation with ABC, at midnight on July 15, 1958.
Early years
KTRG-TV: The Watumull years
David Watumull, through the Hawaiian Paradise Park Corporation, applied for channel 13 in March 1962. Simultaneously, Watumull purchased KOOD and changed its call letters to KTRG.The construction permit was granted on April 27, 1962, and KTRG-TV began telecasting on July 4, 1962; it was more than five hours later than advertised due to technical difficulties with the transmitter and received an assist from the three other Honolulu TV stations to get on the air the first night. Studios were on Kalakaua Avenue. In addition to syndicated programs, KTRG-TV broadcast some local productions. One of these was high school quiz show The Challengers, which debuted in 1963 and was originally moderated by sportscaster Harry Kalas. Another was a local version of the children's program Romper Room. However, the station lost money and was operating on a part-time basis.
KIKU-TV: The Japanese-language years
Watumull filed in January 1966 to sell KTRG-TV to Richard Eaton, owner of the United Broadcasting Company, for an initially agreed sales price of $700,000 ; Watumull kept the radio station. Eaton's programming plans for channel 13 attracted scrutiny at the FCC, as he sought to convert channel 13 into a station broadcasting Japanese-language programming; In October, the commission designated the deal for a hearing on two issues: the proposed conversion to Japanese-language programming and Eaton's past record, as several other United stations had received short-term license renewals. The commission worried that Eaton would have difficulty controlling a station in far-flung Honolulu given the supervision issues that had arisen at other United stations. By January 1967, the station proposed a format consisting of 50 percent Japanese-language and 50 percent English-language programming. With the deal languishing, Hoover Tateishi, a longtime Hawaii broadcaster who had been part of Eaton's bid, resigned in order to program two hours a week of Japanese-language programs on channel 13.While the FCC's ruling on the matter was pending, Friendly Broadcasting sued Hawaiian Paradise Park Corporation in May 1967, alleging that Watumull had broken his contract to sell KTRG-TV to Eaton and was talking with another party who wished to buy the station for a greater purchase price. Watumull claimed he was able to do so because the contract lapsed after a year without FCC approval. However, judge Cyrus Nils Tavares issued a ruling that June 30 that the sales contract was still binding. Hearing examiner Thomas Donahue ruled in favor of Eaton's purchase of KTRG-TV in July 1967, noting that Eaton's poor track record had come from his business model of converting the "dogs and cats" of stations into viable broadcast properties. The sale was then effectuated; after the sale concluded, Hawaiian Paradise Park sued its Washington attorney for malpractice.
Meanwhile, on October 1, KTRG-TV returned to the air as KIKU-TV, with Tateishi as general manager. The new call letters represented the Japanese name for the chrysanthemum flower.
While remaining rooted in Japanese-language programming imported from Japan, KIKU-TV slowly broadened its appeal. In 1968, it began nightly telecasts of sumo wrestling; color telecasting began in 1969. The station introduced subtitles on its Japanese-language programs in 1970, which proved popular and expanded to having half of all programs subtitled by 1975. Another channel 13 specialty was children's programming; it aired such tokusatsu programs as Kamen Rider, Rainbowman, and Android Kikaider. The success of the latter was particularly noteworthy; the show beat Sesame Street in the ratings, and it was noted in an article in Time magazine. In 1971, the station moved from Kalakaua Avenue to studios on Puuhale Road.
From Japanese to English
Mid-Pacific Television Associates ownership
In 1979, Mid-Pacific Television Associates was approved to buy KIKU-TV for $2.7 million; the general partnership featured two consortia of investors, one local and one headed by the Cushman family of San Diego, as well as Japanese network TV Asahi with a 20 percent stake. Despite the presence of TV Asahi in the ownership group, major changes in 1981 led the station's programming away from Japanese-language shows. On June 29, the station doubled the length of its broadcast day and switched to shows mostly in English as Hawaii's only general-entertainment independent station. Japanese programming remained at noon and 10 p.m., times when management believed its primarily older viewers would still tune in. The programming change was met with some dismay by senior citizens and the Japanese program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, but it also was in line with declining Japanese fluency and immigration in Hawaii. A 1998 journal article by Shinji Uozumi suggested that another reason was recent instability in the Japanese yen. Between January 1977 and October 1978, the yen strengthened, going from 271 to the dollar to 176 to the dollar and increasing the prices for Japanese programming as paid by the U.S. station. Joanne Ninomiya, who had been KIKU's general manager since 1969, left in January 1981 due to the proposed changes and then began a venture broadcasting Japanese-language shows on cable. In addition to syndicated programming and the remaining Japanese-language shows, channel 13 also began offering newscasts seven days a week on November 1, 1981. It increased its transmitter power, improving its signal. However, some viewers in the Japanese community refused to watch the station after removing much of the programming that catered to their needs. In a show of the impact KIKU had on non-Japanese-speaking viewers, a Hawaiian woman, A. T. Ko-Opuna, started an unsuccessful petition-writing campaign to urge the FCC to support expanded Japanese-language broadcasting on the station.The largest changes, however, came after Rick Blangiardi, a former University of Hawaiʻi assistant football coach who had worked at KGMB-TV, was named general manager in February 1984. Blangiardi fired 24 employees; he brought with him 13 employees from KGMB and increased the staff size from 48 to 54. The news department was immediately disbanded as a business decision, while programming was upgraded. Blangiardi also changed the station's call sign from KIKU-TV to KHNL, after Honolulu's airport code. Japanese-language shows continued to air from 10 p.m. to midnight, but other than that, the station was operating as a full-time general-entertainment independent that branded itself as a "news alternative" and the "free movie channel". KHNL also began a heavy schedule of local sports telecasts, including next-day broadcasts of University of Hawaiʻi football; sports brought viewers and increased advertising revenue. However, the station still lost money because it reinvested its profits in improvements, especially production equipment for remote sports broadcasts.