Owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, the station has offices on Southwest Naito Parkway in downtown Portland, and its transmitter is located in the Sylvan-Highlands section of the city.
Channel 22 in Salem was switched from a noncommercial to a commercial assignment in April 1979, when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a request to reclassify Salem's KVDO-TV (channel 3), a commercial station that had since been bought by state public broadcaster OEPBS, as a noncommercial station in preparation for its eventual move to Bend.
[4] Even though KECH was just the second independent serving the Portland market, a third planned station in Vancouver, Washington, had already tied up a significant quantity of syndicated programming and movies.
[4] When Larry Black, who also owned stakes in two Portland cable systems, and KECH filed a petition to deny the completion of the KLRK sale on the grounds that Camellia was involved before the sale's completion in contravention of FCC rules, Camellia countered that Black had attempted to undercut its bid to shareholders of the unbuilt Vancouver outlet and even had proposed that it operate as a repeater of KECH.
[7] Brustin and Desmond deepened their involvement in subscription television by acquiring a multipoint distribution system operation that delivered HBO to 10,000 area households from Canadian firm Rogers Cable.
[15] In September 1985, Emerald City Broadcasting, owned by Robert Finkelstein of Los Angeles, acquired KECH-TV in exchange for assuming $4.8 million in debt from Greater Willamette Vision; Desmond continued as general manager.
[16] Viewer response was underwhelming; ratings were low, in part because they measured viewership in the entire Portland television market.
[20] KWVT discontinued all but several hours a week of its entertainment programming on March 31, 1987, to begin airing HSN, giving the network its first broadcast outlet in the state.
[25][26] The investors in Blackstar, including Wesley S. Williams Jr., were involved with a venture capital fund started by the National Association of Broadcasters.
[34][35][36] In 2014, Ion donated KPXG-LD (channel 42), a translator previously used to improve the station's signal in parts of Portland, to Word of God Fellowship, parent company of the Daystar Television Network.