1973 for $4 million. Around that time, the station adopted its present-day KITV call letters (standing for "Island Television") to reflect its service of broadcasting to the Hawaiian Islands. Shamrock Broadcasting, a new company founded by Roy E. Disney, bought out Starr Broadcasting (including KITV) in 1979. Eight years later, Shamrock sold KITV to Tak Communications (owned by Sharad Tak) in 1987. Tak would declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1991 and was later taken over by a group of creditors. During Tak's bankruptcy, Freedom Communications made an offer to purchase KITV, but later withdrew its bid. In 1995, rumors circulated that it would join NBC when KHON—which had been Hawaii's NBC affiliate for 43 years (from its sign-on in 1952 until 1996)—decided to join Fox as part of a groupwide affiliation deal with SF Broadcasting (which acquired the station and three others from Burnham Broadcasting). However, later in 1995, Argyle Television Holdings II bought KITV and then-sister station WGRZ-TV in Buffalo, New York from Tak's creditors. KITV ultimately remained with ABC, and NBC instead signed an affiliation deal with existing Fox affiliate KHNL (channel 13), later switching to the network in January 1996. When Argyle Television Holdings II merged with the Hearst Corporation's broadcasting unit in 1997, KITV and its satellites became part of the newly formed television station group then known as Hearst-Argyle Television. In 1998, the station moved its operations from its longtime studios on Ala Moana Boulevard/Route 92 to their current location on South King Street. Hearst bought out the remainder of the company in mid-2009, dropping the word "Argyle" from the company's name. On May 13, 2015, Hearst announced that it would sell KITV and its satellites to SJL Broadcasting; the deal marks the return of the company to Hawaii, as SJL (then known as Montecito Broadcast Group) formerly owned KHON-TV from 2006 until 2007. The sale was approved by the Federal Communications Commission on July 10, 2015 and completed on September 1, 2015. On April 13, 2017, the FCC announced that KITV would relocate its physical channel to 20 on April 3, 2019 as a result of the broadcast incentive auction. The sale of KITV to Los Angeles–based Allen Media Group, owned by Byron Allen, was announced on August 17, 2020, for $30 million. The sale was completed on January 20, 2021. Programming In its early days, KITV and its predecessors aired most of the