KJPH-TV

KJPH-TV (Channel 17) is a multicultural independent television station in Honolulu, Hawaii which primarily airs programming in Japanese and Filipino. It is owned by BIG Media. The station has studios on South King Street in downtown Honolulu, and has its transmitter located in the nearby town of Makakilo on the west coast of the island of Oahu.
KJPH-TV shares its spectrum with KIKU (Channel 69), an affiliate of MeTV for all of Hawaii.
==History==
===KHIH ===
Channel 17 signed on as KHIH on June 10, 1971. It was owned by a local used car salesman named Patrick Walter who wanted to broadcast hsi thoughts throughout Hawaii. It was a general entertainment independent station, airing usually old public domain shows and movies along with the occasional live event such as a city hall meeting. Later on, the station picked up cartoons that the other stations in the area did not want to air, such as Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales. 
KHIH also began airing more recent, family-friendly shows such as westerns and dramas starting in 1974. They also began a newscast for one hour at 10 pm. Despite this. the station was still deeply unprofitable and as a result Patrick Walter sold KHIH to a Japanese-American company named JapanView in 1976. Originally, they kept the station's regular programming of old westerns, however starting in 1978 they slowly began adding Japanese-language programs, most of them originating from Japan and more specifically from TV Asahi. This culminated in the station switching to 100% Japanese programming by 1981, with their newscast also switching to Japanese. Around this time, they added English subtitles to all of their programming, which heavily increased viewership. The English-language programming that was once on KHIH was diverted to other stations in the area, with most of their cartoons never being aired on a television station in Hawaii ever again.
In 1986, coinciding with the rising emigration of Filipinos to the area, KHIH began airing Filipino-language programs. They also began airing more shows and movies from other Asian countries such as Vietnam, China, South Korea and Thailand. The station was sold to ViewWorld Communications in 1989, who had an idea to turn the programming into a stand-alone cable channel and television network called Asianavision, and had planned to have KHIH as its flagship station. However, this never happened, and instead ViewWorld Communications went bankrupt only a year later and sold the station to Asia Link, another Hawaii-based company. 
=== KJPH-TV===
On August 11, 1991, the station changed its callsign to KJPH-TV, an amalgamation of the ISO codes of Japan (JP) and The Philippines (PH).
One common sight on KJPH-TV around this time was anime. This led to the station gaining a cult following from native English speakers, which was helped out by the English subtitling. This led Asia Link to also consider creating a stand-alone cable channel dedicated to anime. However, this also never came to fruition. In 1998, the station's news programming was expanded to 50 hours a week, with news airing in English, Japanese, Filipino and Korean.
In 2002, KJPH-TV was sold to Worldview Television (not to be confused with MHz Worldview), which introduced more programming from across the world, and a new identity as "Hawaii's link to the world". This was dropped two years later to focus more on East Asia and The Philippines.
On August 12, 2008, KJPH-TV turned off its analog signal due to transmitter failures. They kept their digital companion signal of channel 18. By this point, its penetration in the cable market was 100% due to must-carry laws. 
In 2012, the station was sold to Soft Media Networks, who owned various low-powered stations across the country, for $2.3 million. By this time KJPH-TV aired feeds of various television channels across Asia on its subchannels. 
====Sale to MediaAssociates and switchover to Shop HQ====
On January 12, 2020, KJPH-TV was sold to MediaAssociates, an infomercial distributor. This sparked rumors that the station would soon flip to an all-infomercial format. A few months later, on May 5, the station unexpectedly dropped all remaining Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Korean programming to instead become a 24-hour affiliate of ShopHQ. The station also abandoned its long-time studios, instead being operated out of MediaAssociates' headquarters in Oklahoma City. 
This was met with a universally negative response from KJPH-TV's viewers, the most complaints coming from longtime viewers who could not speak English well. The station had its Facebook page flooded with comments ranging from somber farewells to fiery attacks at the new owners for "ruining the station". "Taking a big voice of the community and turning it into yet another soulless shopping infomercial network just goes to show you how much capitalism is a b____!"
- an anonymous viewer's message on KJPH-TV's Facebook pageIn response to the backlash, MediaAssociates' CEO Dwayne Billingsly said "We're not gonna ignore the messages to restore shows from the far east [sic], but people have to know it's the streaming age, these shows are available online for free now and a station like KJPH-TV is not needed anymore. It costs a lot of money to run this, and we believe the station will be better with the programming we've added!" This response let off even more backlash, criticizing the CEO's use of the term "the far east" to describe East Asia. 
====Sale to BIG Media and restoration of prior programming====
On January 8, 2023, MediaAssociates sold KJPH-TV in full to BIG Media for $3.4 million. The sale was finalized in July. Almost immediately, the station moved back to their old studios, which had been sitting vacant since they switched to Shop HQ, and Japanese and Filipino programming was restored. To announce this, the station's website changed simply to an image of the famous press release announcing Michael Jordan's return to basketball in 1995. The CEO of BIG Media stated in a later press release shortly afterwards that KJPH-TV would air at least 75% of the prior output of programming while being supplemented with other syndicated shows and the relaunch of the newscasts. 
On December 5, 2023, BIG Media. signed on KIKU, a full power tourist information station under the brand "Aloha TV", using the KJPH-TV spectrum. In the press release, the CEO of BIG Media stated that the ratings for channel 17 had gone up 1100% since they acquired it and re-formatted the programming. 
==Programming==
KJPH-TV airs primarily Japanese and Filipino programs throughout the day, while airing English-language infomercials and syndicated programs during the overnight hours. English-language syndicated programming include The Steve Harvey Show, American Dad!, Parking Wars, House M.D. and The King of Queens among others. 
===News Operation ===
As of March 1st, 2024, KJPH-TV airs 40 hours of newscasts weekly. The news is predominantly in English, with news also in Filipino and Japanese. 
News would be a crucial part of KJPH-TV throughout the years, boasting the first Japanese-language TV news operation in Hawaii when it launched in 1981. The station would also produce special-interest programming related to the Japanese and Filipino communities in Hawaii, such as the documentary "The Marcos", produced in 1996 about the infamous Marcos family's relationship with Hawaii, which won many local awards, including a local Emmy. in 2008 KJPH-TV produced the critically acclaimed documentary "What Happened to the Native Hawaiians?", which too won many local awards. 
The news operation would peak at 50 hours a week in 2004, slowly being cut back due to budget cuts by the station's owners. KJPH-TV would cease all newscasts in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but with the switch to Shop HQ full-time in May the news operation was seen as unnecessary. With BIG Media ownership, the news operation, entitled "News 17 Hawaii", would come back in August 2023 with 30 hours of locally produced newscasts in English and Tagalog, extended to 40 hours in December. Filipino American news anchor Emilio Ramirez, who has ties to Honolulu, was moved from WGNT to KJPH-TV to become its lead anchor. The station has promised the revival of locally produced documentaries. 
On May 7th, 2024, the self-produced documentary "The Disappearing Hawaiian" premiered on YouTube and on KJPH-TV. It received much acclaim from viewers, earning over 200k YouTube views in just one day after its premiere. 
==KIKU ==
KIKU (Channel 69) launched on December 5th, 2023 on KJPH-TV's spectrum as a loping 30 minute feed of advertisements of various Hawaiian resorts. Previously, Channel 69 was home to low powered The Box/MeTV affiliate K69IE. On June 1st 2024, it became an affiliate of MeTV. Previously, MeTV was on KJPH-TV's DT2 subchannel. 
== Technical Information==
===Subchannels ===
Subchannels of KJPH-TV and KIKU
License	Channel	Video	Aspect	Short Name	Programming
KJPH-TV	17.1 	1080i	16:9 	KJPH 	Main KJPH-TV programming
KJPH-TV	17.2 	480i 	16:9 	TFC 	The Filipino Channel
KJPH-TV	17.3 	480i 	16:9 	NHK 	NHK World
KJPH-TV	17.4 	480i 	16:9 	TNA 	Televisora Nacional Americana
KJPH-TV	17.5 	480i 	4:3 	SHOPHQ 	Shop LC
KIKU 	69.1 	720p 	16:9 	KIKU 	Main KIKU programming/MeTV
KIKU 	69.2 	480i 	16:9 	TOONS 	MeTV Toons
Category:Television channels and stations established in 1971
Category:Honolulu, HI
Category:Hawaii
Category:Channel 17
Category:BIG Media
Category:Filipino stations
Category:Japanese-language television channels
Category:Multicultural independent stations
Category:Shop LC subchannel-only affiliated stations
Category:NHK Affiliated Stations
Category:Independent television stations