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.
KNAZ-TV
The station was founded by Wendell Elliott, Sr. as KOAI-TV and began operations on May 2, 1970. Elliott had managed a television station in Dodge City, Kansas in the 1950s, had founded a station in Ensign, Kansas, and was a founder of the Kansas Association of Broadcasters in 1951. Elliott died in 1974, and control of the station passed to a group headed by his son, Wendell Elliott, Jr. For most of the earlier part of its history, the station was unable to afford microwave feeds for network or syndicated programming. Instead, it operated with what was called a "dirty feed," where station engineers switched to and from the signal of KTAR-TV (now KPNX) in Phoenix and had to cover up KTAR-TV's local content (including commercials and news) with its own programming. Programming included a daily live one hour program immediately following the "Today" show, evening "rip and read" newscasts with a single talent and locked-down cameras, plus a weekly program of news from the Navajo Nation, spoken in Navajo. Little more is known about the early operations of the station, but Northern Arizona University maintains an archive of KOAI-TV material from 1975 and later.