KAAH-TV

KAAH-TV, virtual channel 26 (UHF digital channel 27), is a TBN owned-and-operated television station located in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States. KAAH's studios are located on Smith Street in downtown Honolulu, and its transmitter is located on Palehua Ridge, north of Makakilo. KAAH-TV programming can also be seen on Oceanic Cable channel 26 statewide (with the exception of Hawai'i Island (the "Big Island"), where KAAH is not available on cable at all.

History

KAAH signed on the air December 23, 1982 under the call letters KSHO-TV, as Hawaii's first television station operating on the UHF band. Originally operating as a general entertainment independent station, the station offered a lineup of cartoons, sitcoms, drama series and movies during its early years. The station also aired Asian programming, primarily on weekends. In its early days, it carried business news programming from Financial News Network, ethnic programming from the International Television Network, and carried ABC, CBS, and NBC programs that KITV (channel 4), KGMB (then on channel 9, now on channel 5) and KHON-TV (channel 2) chose to decline; programming from ABC's daytime lineup that was pre-empted by KITV was the most visible on KSHO's schedule.

At the same time that channel 26 launched, the station would get more competition when KIKU (channel 13, now KHNL), which had a part-English/part-Japanese programming schedule up until 1980 when it reverted to an English language general entertainment format but retained some Asian language programs airing during the day, began adding more English-language programming and moved most of its Japanese programming to Sundays in an effort to be more competitive with KSHO. That would later be followed by the debuts of four additional stations that also added English-language first-run programming at the time: KHAI-TV (channel 20, now KIKU, no relation to the present-day KHNL that once bore those call letters) in 1983, KWHE (channel 14) and KBFD (channel 32) in 1986, and KFVE (then on channel 5, now on channel 9) in 1987. In between that period, channel 26 changed its call letters to KMGT in 1986. From 1986 to 1990, the station was branded as "K-Magic" – and even carried Los Angeles Lakers basketball games featuring Magic Johnson (who, in one promo for "K-Magic", said, "What a great name for a TV station!").

By 1990, KMGT began phasing out general entertainment programming in favor of carrying Home Shopping Network and religious programming from TBN as a dual affiliate; the station eventually changed its call letters to KOBN in 1992. The following year, the station was sold to All American Broadcasting. In 1996, the station would switch call letters again to KAAH, it dropped HSN programming that year and began carrying TBN programming full-time. The Trinity Broadcasting Network would later buy the station outright in 2003; however, although it is owned by a nonprofit broadcaster that operates mainly non-commercial stations, KAAH-TV continues to be licensed by the Federal Communications Commission as a commercial outlet (three other religious stations in the market – KKAI (channel 14), KWHE-TV (channel 14) and KUPU (channel 15) – are also licensed as commercial stations, although only the latter two carry secular programming).

KAAH operated KLEI in Kailua-Kona as a satellite station during the 1990s; that station is now a full-power standalone outlet serving as an affiliate of My Family TV. KAAH formerly operated a low-power repeater station, K34HC in Hilo. TBN took K34HC off-the-air on April 13, 2010 due to declining financial support, which has been attributed to the digital transition.^[1]

Digital television

Digital channels^[2]

This station's digital signal, like most other full-service TBN owned-and-operated stations, carries five different TBN-run networks.

TBN-owned full-power stations permanently ceased analog transmissions on April 16, 2009.

Analog-to-digital conversion

In February 2006, K34HC was granted a construction permit to begin converting operations to digital television prior to being taken off the air. Had it been completed, the station would have broadcast at an effective radiated power of 15 kW.

KAAH-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over UHF channel 26, on January 15, 2009, the date in which full-power television stations in Hawaii transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts (six months earlier than the June 12 transition date for stations on the U.S. mainland). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 27,^[3] using PSIP to display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 26.

References

External links

• TBN official website
• Query the FCC's TV station database for KAAH
  • Query the FCC's TV station database for K34HC
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on KAAH-TV