KCCN AM To Drop Hawaiian Music

A front page news story in The Honolulu Advertiser (1/8/98) reported that radio station KCCN AM 1420 will be dropping their traditional Hawaiian music format in favor for a new news, talk and sports format. Among the reasons for dropping Hawaiian music is the fact that the AM operation has been losing ratings points over the years and that management decided that a news/talk format would make the station more competitive. The change would also compliment their University of Hawaii sports coverage.

The article stated that fans of traditional Hawaiian music are upset at the impending change citing that an outlet for this kind of music is needed, especially in Hawaii.

KCCN 1420 AM has been broadcasting Hawaiian music since the 1960s. Their sister station operations, KCCN FM 100 and KINE FM 105 will continue to play "Island Music" as well as contemporary Hawaiian music.

KITV Moves to New Facilities

Honolulu television station KITV Channel 4, the ABC affiliate moved to its new One Archer Lane studio facility on South King Street last month. The move signals a new era for the station as well as television broadcasting in general for Hawaii. KITV's news division is now utilitizing state of the art digital broadcasting equipment for all of its newscasts. The station will soon be the first in Hawaii to broadcast an all digital TV signal that can be received with new generation, high definition television sets. For more information about KITV, visit their website at http://www.kitv.com

Fox 2 News Still Leads

Television station KHON TV Channel 2, the local Fox affiliate continues to lead the ratings war in the key evening and late night local news slots. In the Neilsen poll released last month which reflects the period during the November sweeps. KHON was #1, followed by KITV, KGMB and KHNL for the 6 o clock news. The same rankings also applied to the 10 o clock news, only with different numbers.

December 7, 1997

Hilo's KHLO Radio Active Again.

KHLO AM 850 Hilo Hawaii has returned to the air after a ten month absence with their same "oldies" format. "All New Crusin 850" is the monicker KHLO is using for their station ID.

KHLO went off the air in February after a windstorm blew their transmitter tower down. Their new transmitter is in an unknown location but is stronger and less "nullable" than from the previous site according to industry observer Charles Boehnke.

KHLO, a Brewer station will be competing with Big Island Radio's KAOE 92.7 FM in the Hilo market for listeners of the Oldies format.

-- Information forwarded by Charles Boehnke

December 6, 1997.

Oceanic Cable To Raise Service Rates

In what seems to be an annual occurance, Oahu's Oceanic Cable, supplier of TV signals to over 250,000 households has once again announced a rate increase for its services. The standard cable service rates for most subscribers will be increasing from the present $25.15 to $27.53 starting January 1, 1998. The increase is an increase of $2.38 that covers the standard services. According to the summary sent out with the latest billing, the increase covers an inflation adjustment, programming cost adjustment, and a $1 annual increase.

To make matters even worse, the Cable Franchise Fee will be increased by 13 cents, going from $1.72 a month to $1.85. The franchise fee is a tax levied by the state government to offset the costs of public access cable programming.

While the costs are increasing, Oceanic has added a couple of new channels to whet subscriber appetites. On December 1st Oceanic added the Fox News Channel to its Standard Service as well as moving The Cartoon Network channel out from Value Plus to standard service. Oceanic recently added Animal Planet a few months ago to standard service.

Oceanic has dropped CNN-I/CCN-fn news service from its line-up to accommodate the new Fox News Channel. CSPAN 2, which was sharing the same channel number as CNN-I has been moved to Channel 60, sharing its time with the Oceanic promotional channel.

Basic service subsribers will note that Oceanic will be moving TBS Superstation out of Basic and replacing it with the Value Vision shopping network.

2nd Annual Poll Yields Mixed Results

Radio Station I-94 FM, NBC Hawaii's News 8 broadcast and Channel 2's Joe Moore are the winners in this year's 2nd Annual Hawaii Radio & Television Guide Reader's Poll. The poll conducted during a six week period from October 1 to November 15, 1997 drew 66 respondents mainly from Oahu who stated their preferences as to what they liked about Hawaii's electronic radio stations and local television news. The poll is a completely unscientific snapshot of reader opinions and preferences.

For more details on the Hawaii Radio & Television Guide Reader Poll, select this link.

Honolulu Advertiser Profiles Hawaii's TV News Operations

The Honolulu Advertiser ran a 5 part series this week on the state of Hawaii's local broadcast news stations. The series essentially stated that since KHNL's entry into the news market, changes have come swiftly to all of Hawaii's TV stations. The series also pointed out that KITV 4 News may beat the long running #1 newscast in town, the Channel 2 News on KHON anchored by Joe Moore. The series ran in the paper from November 30 to December 4.

MEDIA COMMENTS *

KIKI's "Hawaii Country" is Welcome Relief

By Charles (Chuck) Boehnke

"Hawaii's Country" does have some merit I will say. It is a vast improvement over the "Hot New Young Country" format which is doing its best to kill country music across America.

At least you can understand most of the words!

The music also has some individuality too. Not the same "Thumpa Thumpa" in every tune but some real melodious tunes and in many cases the proper nasal twang.

I don't imagine the teenage deafened population will take to it much, cause they can't hear it I'd guess! But, there is more to the world than those under twenty and KIKI is making an effort to reach them with "Hawaii's Country" on AM 990. Will it sell? Time will tell.

As a one time CW jock I think I like it. Just so they don't fall into the syndrome of "The Play List Comes First" and inject some variety in to the sets. As a former Music Director I believe in playing as wide a range of music within the format as possible and even a stranger or two to keep it fresh.

The word "Fresh" is something radio lost a long time ago.

* EDITOR'S NOTE: "Media Comments" is a new feature that I will be trying here. I encourage anyone who has something intellegent to say about the Hawaii radio or TV industry to drop me a line or two. Eventually I will be spinning this section off to its own page. Since this is the first commentary, it'll stay here on this news page for now. Commentaries can be addressed to macpro@lava.net.

-- Melvin Ah Ching, Hawaii Radio & Television Guide webguy.

November 25, 1997.

Jim Leahey Returns to Broadcast Booth

Jim Leahey, after battling lukemia for the past several months, will return to the broadcast booth this weekend to work the UH basketball game against Indiana and the UH football game against Notre Dame. Leahey, 54, is still undergoing periodic treatment for the disease, which is currently in remission.

From Dayle Turner's Hawaii Sports News

November 23, 1997

990 AM Changes to Country Music

KIKI AM 990 switched to a country music format last week. The station which was simulcasting KIKI FM's (I-94) CHR/Dance music format is now known as "Hawaii's Country" and is a live operation which features a healthy dose of contemporary country hits. AM 990's entry into the country music market fills a three year void in Honolulu when the last country station, KDEO AM 940 was sold. Hawaii's only other country music station is KDLX FM 94.3 on the island of Maui. KIKI AM is owned by the Patterson Hawaii, part of the Capstar group.

November 16, 1997.

Annual Radio & TV Poll Comes To An End

The second annual Hawaii Radio & Television Guide reader's poll has come to an end. For 6 weeks, surfers to this website were given the opportunity to vote for their favorite Hawaii based radio station and local TV newscasts and anchor persons. The last day to participate in the poll was November 15. The results are now being tallied and will be announced soon.

November 13, 1997.

Elisa Yadao Leaves Bishop Estate for KHNL TV

Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate P-R spokesperson Elisa Yadao announced yesterday that she was leaving her post to accept the managing editor's position at KHNL television. She will join KHNL's news team as the Managing Editor with Dave Patterson being promoted to Executive Producer, according to a release from the station.

"The additions of Dave and Elisa are wonderful compliments to our existing team. Their knowledge of Hawaii and the news business will help us as we continue to move forward in our efforts to provide the most complete and compelling local news product in Hawaii television," said KHNL's President/GM John Fink.

Ms. Yadao commented in a Honolulu Star-Bulletin article that "My job of late has been all-consuming," and "very stress stressful." She takes her new post on December 1st. Yadao has been with Bishop Estate for 8 years and previously worked as a reporter with KGMB TV for 10 years. Details on her announcement can be found at the Star Bulletin's website.

Tourist Information Radio Website Up

Hawaii's only radio station targeted to our Japanese visitors has recently unveiled their website. KORL's website is at http://www.hawaii.co.jp/. Their programming mix includes Contemporary Hits, Contemporary Hawaiian, and Japanese POP music. The station is bi-lingual with English and Japanese speaking announcers sharing the on-air duties. KORL FM broadcasts at 99.5 on the FM dial and is owned by World FM Network. They can be reached at 536-5252.

SHORT TAKES: Radio station KMVI AM 550 on Maui recently switched its format from adult standards to "Rock n Roll Oldies". KAIM AM 870 now broadcasts 24-hours a day. The station along with its FM operation raised $200,000 during their recent "praise-a-thon."

November 6, 1997.

Robert Kekaula To Join KITV 4 News

Sportscaster Robert Kekaula will rejoin the KITV 4 news team. The announcement was made on KITV's 5 o'clock newscast by sports anchor Shawn Ching. It was followed up on the 6pm news by an announcement made by Tina Shelton. She said that Kekaula will be anchoring the weekend sports and will be doing sports reporting for the station on weekdays. Kekaula lost his job at rival station KHNL TV last month after an altercation with one of the producers there. Early news reports through the day indicated that Kekaula was negotiating a deal with KITV. He worked at KITV 4 before switching to KHNL in 1995.