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.
KCWI-TV
Channel 23 first signed on the air on January 20, 2001 under the callsign KPWB-TV (the KPWB calls were originally used by KMAX-TV in Sacramento, California during that station's 1995 to 1998 tenure as a WB affiliate under Pappas Telecasting ownership, before later becoming a UPN owned-and-operated station and then joining The CW). The station originally maintained a primary affiliation with The WB and a secondary affiliation with UPN. KPWB dropped UPN programming in 2003, carrying the full WB primetime and Kids' WB lineups during the remainder of the station's tenure with the network. Prior to the station's launch, this area had been without programming from The WB; from 1995 to 1999, The WB programming was available on Des Moines-Ames cable systems via the former superstation feed of WGN-TV in Chicago.
On January 24, 2006, Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced the shutdowns of The WB and UPN effective that September. In place of these networks, both companies decided to form The CW, a new service that combined the most popular programming from both UPN and The WB with new series produced specifically for the network. Just over one month later on February 22, 2006, News Corporation announced that it would start up MyNetworkTV, a sister network to Fox, which would be operated as a joint venture between Fox Television Stations and Twentieth Television. MyNetworkTV was created in order to give UPN and WB-affiliated stations that were not selected to join The CW another option besides becoming an independent station.