KHON-TV
KHON-TV first signed on the air on December 15, 1952 as a primary NBC affiliate, KONA-TV, occupying the channel 11 position. It also had a secondary affiliation with DuMont (which it later shared with KULA-TV, now KITV, after it signed on in 1954) until its demise in 1955. The station, which is Hawaii's second-oldest television station (behind KGMB, originally on channel 9, now on channel 5), was originally owned by Herbert Richards. Two years later in 1954, the "Honolulu Advertiser" purchased the station. On October 16, 1955, KONA changed channels from 11 to 2 due to the lower VHF positions (2 to 6) having the most powerful ERPs at the time. The channel 11 frequency now belongs to PBS member station KHET. In 1956, KONA was sold to Pacific and Southern Broadcasting, the forerunner of Combined Communications. KAII signed on in 1958, with KHAW following in 1961. In 1965, the station's call letters were changed to the current KHON-TV.
K38IZ-D
In June 1996, Polar Broadcasting sold the station to Paxson Communications (now ION Media Networks and the station became part of Infomall TV Network, or inTV. Paxson Communications sold the station in August 1999 to Spanish Independent Broadcasting Network, who changed the programming to Spanish-language independent, rebroadcasting station KWHY-TV channel 22 of Los Angeles, California. The next year, needing to vacate the upper-700 MHz band (channels 60 - 69), the station applied for and was granted a permit to move to channel 53. The station was licensed in June 2002 as K53GF. Since then, the station has dropped the KWHY-TV rebroadcast and operates as an independent station, airing mostly movies and infomercials for local car dealers.
In May 2005, K53GF received a request to vacate channel 53 from Aloha Partners, who were winners of the FCC auction for the spectrum now occupied by channel 54. However, with the DTV conversion still in process, there were no suitable in-core channels to which K53GF could move their analog operations. Instead, they requested to operate as a low-power digital TV station (LPDTV) on channel 38 and the FCC granted a construction permit in October 2005 to build LPDTV station K38IZ-D. In the meantime, Aloha Partners has not launched its proposed service to Public Safety, and K53GF remained on the air on analog channel 53 until May 2010. Aloha Partners and its channel 54/59 spectrum were acquired on February 4, 2008 by AT&T Mobility.