Hawaii News Now: The Facts About Hawaii TV News Consolidation

We would like to offer an important correction to your story about the potential closing of “The Hawaii Reporter” and the departure of Malia Zimmerman.

In a section decrying the loss of independent editorial voices you wrote:

“In 2009, three TV news operations consolidated under one owner, Raycom Media of Alabama, into what’s now known as Hawaii News Now. The same TV news shows are now simulcast on all three stations. Two independent voices were lost in that deal.”

We understand that many people remain confused about this issue — so here are the basic facts:

PF Bentley/Civil Beat

In 2009, there were not three news rooms operating at KHNL, KGMB and KFVE. KFVE did not have a news department. So three news operations were NOT consolidated into one. Raycom is not the owner of KFVE. Raycom did consolidate the newsrooms of KHNL and KGMB into Hawaii News Now to ensure the survival of our news effort in a very challenging environment for news operations all across the country. KFVE purchases services from Hawaii News Now, including local programming production and news, but the KFVE newscasts are stand-alone newscasts not simulcast with KHNL and KGMB. KFVE has its own sales department which competes with all the other stations in the market. The only times all three stations carry the same broadcast is during major news events, particular natural disasters, debates and other situations of statewide urgency and importance. Hawaii News Now and KFVE each has their own General Manager providing local editorials on a regular basis, which was not a feature of the KHNL and KGMB prior to consolidation.

So, in fact, there are still two editorial “voices” — those of KFVE and Hawaii News Now, being broadcast. The decision to consolidate news operations led to what is now Hawaii’s largest broadcast and digital news operation in Hawaii, providing more hours of news, with more investigative, enterprising and public interest news than any other station in Hawaii. This would not be possible without consolidation, because of the simple math that revenue for any single television station in this market is not enough to do what we do now.

We kindly ask that you correct the record.

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