KHON-TV
On October 23, 2006, KHON-TV was announced as the Honolulu affiliate of The CW, carrying the network on its second digital subchannel. Beginning in March 2006 (two months after the network's launch was announced), The CW had struggled to find an affiliate in Honolulu after the market's then-WB affiliate KFVE, which was seen by many as the likeliest candidate to join The CW, signed with competing network MyNetworkTV, and former UPN affiliate KIKU (which aired the network's programming in the afternoons) declined to take the CW affiliation.
KHON-TV
On January 1, 1996, KHON-TV switched its affiliation to Fox (and changed its on-air branding to ""Fox 2""); the NBC affiliation moved to former Fox affiliate KHNL (channel 13). Unlike the New World Communications-owned Fox affiliates that joined the network during the previous 18-month span, KHON ran Fox Kids programming on weekdays (until Fox discontinued the weekday block in December 2001, airing weekdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and then from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. until the fall of 2001 when it was moved to 10:00 a.m. to noon) and Saturday mornings (until November 2008, when 4Kids Entertainment ceased programming Fox's children's block, with the network discontinuing its children's programming altogether). KHON also expanded its local news programming on weekdays, seeing an increase in newscast ratings with the affiliation switch. KHON currently has the distinction of having the highest-rated local news programming of any Fox affiliate nationwide, and also declares itself as "America's No. 1 Fox affiliate", though the network's Miami affiliate WSVN makes this claim as well. Neither station mentions Fox in its logo or branding; when KHON was rebranded to "KHON 2" in 2004, it became the first Fox station to ditch the network's brand standardization for its stations while it was still an affiliate. KHON is now one of only four Fox affiliates that omit network references in their branding (alongside WSVN, WDRB in Louisville, Kentucky—which had branded as "Fox 41" from 1996 to 2011, and KVRR in Fargo, North Dakota—which branded simply as "Fox" from the 1990s until March 2015).
On November 28, 1995, Silver King Communications (operated by former Fox executive Barry Diller) announced that it would acquire Savoy Pictures; as a result, Savoy Pictures and Fox ended their partnership and sold the SF Broadcasting stations, including KHON-TV, to the USA Networks division Silver King Broadcasting. Silver King, which later became known as USA Broadcasting, owned several stations on the United States mainland that were affiliated with the Home Shopping Network, which was also owned by USA Networks. The sale of KHON and the other SF stations was approved and finalized in March 1996, with its other assets being merged into the company that November.