City Pearl City, Hawaii First air date 1984 Language(s) Chinese & English | Frequency 1370 kHz Format Chinese language | |
Broadcast area Honolulu County, Hawaii | ||
KUPA (1370 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Pearl City, Hawaii. The station is owned by James Su, through licensee Beach Time Broadcast, LLC. KUPA operates at 6,200 watts from a non-directional transmitter near Mililani Cemetery Road in Pearl City.
Contents
Map of Kupa
KUPA broadcasts Chinese language programming to the Honolulu media market, covering the island of O'ahu.
History
KUPA was originally KLNI in the 1980s before becoming KIPO/KIFO, a news/talk radio outlet operated by Hawaii Public Radio from 1990 to 2002, when it went off the air and was sold to a Utah-based company. In 2005, the broadcast license was sold to another Utah-based broadcaster who, after closing the sale in 2006, had planned to bring a Spanish language format to Honolulu, but changed his mind and opted to go with a Sports radio format. KUPA returned to the air on August 31, 2007, with programming from Fox Sports Radio with plans to include local content.
On November 1, 2007, KUPA went off the air when it lost its transmitter site, with a brief return to maintain the license in November 2008 from a temporary site. The station resumed regular programming on March 15, 2010.
KUPA's entry into sports radio brought the number of sports talk outlets in Honolulu to three. 1420 KKEA and 1500 KHKA are the other two while a third one, 1180 KORL, offered sports talk in the evening hours. This type of competition is unusual, especially in a market with no major professional sport teams, in part due to geographical and financial reasons.
A Chinese language format was observed to be in operation in mid-January 2016. With KORL off the air, a three-way Sports radio competition has returned with 990 KIKI now airing the Fox Sports Radio network that had previously been heard on KUPA.