KFVE
KFVE (channel 6) is a television station licensed to Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, United States, on the west coast of the island of Hawaii, often called the Big Island. It is owned by Gray Media and is a sister station to Honolulu stations KGMB (channel 5), the CBS affiliate, and KHNL (channel 13), the NBC affiliate. Its main channel carries the independent K5 service, while its second subchannel carries the Spanish-language Telemundo network, branded Telemundo Hawaii. A separately owned satellite station, KLEI (channel 21) in Wailuku, on Maui, relays its programming under a local marketing agreement. Because Hawaii is an island state, KFVE's history of call sign changes, satellite relationships and relay arrangements is central to understanding how television reaches viewers outside Honolulu.
A station with two different histories in one call sign
The call letters KFVE are associated with two different Hawaii stations, and separating them is essential. The original KFVE signed on in Honolulu on February 7, 1988, on channel 5, as the last VHF station in that market, with low-budget programming including repeats of Hawaii Five-O and later movies, syndicated shows and Japanese television dramas. In 1993 KHNL took over its management in the first local marketing agreement of its kind in the United States, University of Hawaii athletics moved to it, and it rebranded as The Home Team, later known as K5. That Honolulu station was sold and became KHII-TV in January 2019, while Gray retained the K5 intellectual unit. The Kailua-Kona station described in this profile is a different licence: it adopted the KFVE call sign only in 2020, after previously being known as KVHF, KLEI and KSIX-TV. The shared name reflects the migration of the K5 brand across Hawaii licences, not a single continuous station.
Origins on the Big Island in 1988
The Kailua-Kona licence dates to 1988. It first aired that year as KVHF, operating on analog VHF channel 6, whose audio could also be heard at 87.7 FM at the edge of the FM radio band, a feature of channel 6 stations. It began as a repeater of KMGT, relaying that station's programming to the Kona coast. On March 9, 1992, it was renamed KLEI. As an independent station in its first decade, from 1988 to 1998, it served a part of Hawaii that had few local broadcast signals of its own and depended heavily on relays of Honolulu and Hilo services. Its low power and island terrain limited its direct reach, but it established a licensed television presence for Kailua-Kona, the main population centre on the west side of the Big Island.
Satellite of KPXO and the Pax-Ion years
From 1998 to 2011 the station was a satellite of KPXO-TV, the Paxson Communications station in Hawaii, and carried the programming of the successive Pax TV, i: Independent Television and Ion services through that relationship. Its listed former affiliations describe it in that period as Independent from 1988 to 1998 and then Pax, i and Ion via KPXO from 1998 to 2011. Satellite status meant that Kailua-Kona viewers received a national network schedule chosen in Honolulu, with little programming originated for the Big Island, but it kept the channel occupied and provided an entertainment service that the small Kona market could not easily have supported on local advertising alone. In 2011 that arrangement ended and the station was spun off as a stand-alone outlet.
The Family Channel years and the road to Telemundo
As a stand-alone station, KLEI joined The Family Channel and carried its family programming from 2011 to 2017. In 2012 the call sign acquired a -TV suffix, becoming KLEI-TV. The end of the Family Channel period left the station in need of a new programme source at a time when Gray's predecessor interests in Hawaii were reorganising Spanish-language service for the state. Hawaii had no full-power Telemundo affiliate of its own, and Spanish-speaking residents and visitors were largely served by cable. The decision to place Telemundo on this Big Island licence in 2018 therefore gave the network an over-the-air presence in Hawaii for the first time through this station group.
2018: Telemundo, a new satellite and two call sign swaps
In 2018 the station became a Telemundo affiliate. In the same year its call sign changed from KLEI-TV to KSIX-TV, a reference to its channel 6 position. Also in 2018 Gray acquired a Maui station from the KWHE group to serve as its satellite. That Wailuku station had been authorised in 1991 and had signed on on June 15, 1993, as KWHM, on analog UHF channel 21. It had been an independent from 1993 to 1995, a WB affiliate from 1995 to 1998, and a LeSEA religious station from 1998 to 2018. On its acquisition it took the call sign KLEI, which the Kona station was giving up, and it followed the same programming path, carrying Telemundo as its main service from 2018 to 2023 and then moving Telemundo to its second subchannel. The satellite is owned by Mango Broadcasting Company, LLC, and operated by Gray Media under a local marketing agreement.
Becoming KFVE and joining the Gray Hawaii group
In 2020 the Kona station changed its call sign from KSIX-TV to KFVE, the call sign made available when the former Honolulu channel 5 station became KHII-TV. Listings explain the choice by noting that the prior station using this call sign broadcast on channel 5 and that the new station's first subchannel is branded K5. Gray Media had become the owner of the Hawaii stations, including KGMB and KHNL, through its acquisition of Raycom Media, which was completed in 2019. KFVE is licensed to Gray Television Licensee, LLC. Its sister stations share the Hawaii News Now news brand in Honolulu, and KGMB's listing describes KFVE as relaying KHNL's second and sixth digital subchannels, the K5 independent service and the Telemundo service, to the Big Island. Its transmitter operates with an effective radiated power of only 5.5 kilowatts, but from a site 825 metres above average terrain, at 19 degrees 43 minutes 4 seconds north and 155 degrees 55 minutes 6 seconds west, height that gives the signal useful coverage of the Kona coast.
The 2023 change: K5 on the main channel, Telemundo on 6.2
In 2023 the station's programme arrangement was reversed. Telemundo, which had been its main channel service since 2018, moved to the second digital subchannel, 6.2, branded Telemundo Hawaii, and the main channel, 6.1, took the independent K5 service that had previously been carried as a subchannel of KHNL in Honolulu. The station's branding reflects the split: K5 for general programming and Telemundo Hawaii for 6.2. Its Telemundo subchannel is relayed beyond the Big Island, through sister station KHNL's sixth subchannel, 13.6, in Honolulu and through the second subchannel of KKAI (50.2) in Kailua, both on Oahu, so that the Spanish-language service is available in the state's largest population centre as well as in Kona and, through KLEI on 21.2, on Maui.
Programming
On its main channel KFVE carries the K5 independent schedule, which historically has been associated in Hawaii with local sports, including University of Hawaii athletics in its Honolulu incarnation, together with syndicated entertainment programming. Gray's Hawaii stations are centred on the shared Hawaii News Now operation of KGMB and KHNL in Honolulu, which supplies news to the group, rather than on a separate newsroom in Kailua-Kona. On 6.2, Telemundo provides Spanish-language prime time drama, national news, sports and entertainment for Hawaii viewers, a service distributed statewide through the combination of the KFVE and KLEI transmitters and the Honolulu relays described above. The station has no separate website of its own apart from the Gray Hawaii stations' shared online presence.
Technical information
KFVE broadcasts on digital UHF channel 25 and displays virtual channel 6, matching its former analog channel. Its facility ID is 664, one of the lower facility numbers in current use, reflecting the age of its authorisation. Its satellite KLEI broadcasts on digital channel 21, which is also its virtual channel, with an effective radiated power of 23.5 kilowatts and an antenna 755 metres above average terrain above Wailuku, and facility ID 37105. The paired transmitters on Hawaii and Maui, supplemented by relays on Oahu, illustrate the multi-transmitter structure required to provide a nominally single station's service across an archipelago where no one transmitter can reach more than one or two islands.
Significance
KFVE matters less as a programme producer than as a distribution platform. It has carried, in sequence, a relay service, an independent schedule, the Pax and Ion networks by satellite, family programming, Telemundo as a main channel, and now the K5 independent service with Telemundo on a subchannel. Each change reflects a decision by its owners about how best to use a small Big Island licence within a statewide group dominated by Honolulu stations. Its adoption of the KFVE name and the K5 brand in 2020, and the 2023 placement of Telemundo on 6.2, extended two established Hawaii television identities to audiences on the neighbour islands, and gave Spanish-language network television a continuing over-the-air home in Hawaii.
