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.
KJRH-TV
Three months before it signed on, Skelly chose instead to assign the television station the KVOO call letters (which stood for "Voice Of Oklahoma") that had been used by the companion radio station since it signed on in June 1926. (The station's initial slogan was an extension of the one originated by KVOO radio, "The Eyes of Oklahoma".) The station began test broadcasts on November 15, 1954, originally transmitting over a closed-circuit television system. KVOO-TV officially commenced regular programming three weeks later on December 5, with a 39-minute special presentation at 3:00 p.m. that afternoon, respectively featuring speeches from Skelly, Kerr and McGee and a film from NBC dedicating the station's launch; following that dedication program was the first NBC network program aired by channel 2, "Meet the Press". The station – which originally broadcast for 17 hours each day from 7:00 a.m. to midnight – originally operated from studio facilities located in the Akdar Building on South Denver Avenue (between West Third and West Fourth Streets) in downtown Tulsa. KVOO was also the third television station (behind CBS affiliate KOTV [channel 6], which debuted on October 22, 1949, and KCEB) and the second VHF television station to sign on in the Tulsa market. (ABC affiliate KTVX [channel 8, now KTUL] did not have its city of license reassigned from Muskogee to Tulsa until August 1957, although that station had been operating auxiliary studio facilities located at Lookout Mountain in southwest Tulsa from the time it began operations.)