KHNL's parent company, Rhode Island-based Providence Journal Co., is being sold in a $1.5 billion deal to the Dallas-based publishing and broadcasting company A.H. Belo Corp.

Belo, which owns the Dallas Morning News and a string of television stations, will buy KHNL's owner for a mixture of cash and shares, the companies said today.

John Fink, president of KHNL since Aug. 5, said it's too early for him to say but he expects only a positive result from the change.

"We're ecstatic," he said. "Belo is a quality company and a very locally minded company." Belo takes a close interest in the communities where it operates, he said.

The combination of KHNL and Providence's other eight television stations with Belo's six stations will reach 12.3 percent of U.S. households, the companies said.

The stations include NBC, ABC and CBS affiliates as well as independents, and there are also cable TV interests.

KHNL has been owned by Providence since early 1992, when the company acquired KHNL's parent, Seattle-based King Broadcasting Co.

In May 1993, KHNL also began operating KFVE-TV (Channel 5) under a "time brokerage" agreement in which KHNL provides all programming and advertising services for KFVE.

KFVE moved its operations into KHNL's Puuhale Road facility. KFVE is in a battle to renew its rights to broadcast University of Hawaii sports events.

Oceanic Cablevision offered more than $6 million in May for the rights and KFVE has said if it has to beat Oceanic's bid, it will.

KHNL officially became an NBC affiliate at the start of this year, after the previous Hawaii NBC station, KHON, was sold.

In April last year, in preparation for that change, KHNL launched its first local news program, a high-technology production. KHNL then began to call itself KHNL Hawaii News 8.

KHNL began life in the 1960s as KIKU, broadcasting mostly Japanese programs. A California-Hawaii partnership bought it in 1979 for a reported $2.7 million and operated it until the sale to King Broadcasting.