Big things usually happen on Oahu first, but not this time.
One of the largest faith groups in the islands now has its own radio station, which came to life on Maui earlier this month.
KCIK-AM 740 signed on Jan. 5 in a ceremony at St. Theresa Church in Kihei which was attended by Bishop Larry Silva of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu; Monsignor Terry Watanabe of St. Theresa Church; Doug Sherman, Immaculate Heart Radio founder and president; and other IHR officials, as well as church members.
Silva flipped the switch to get the station’s signal on the air. The station is nonprofit and listener-supported.
Getting the station on the air was a long process, Sherman said.
"Ten years ago we filed an application with the (Federal Communications Commission) for the station that just went on the air," he said.
IHR had an engineer conduct a nationwide study to look for areas where new Catholic radio stations might be allowed, "and one of the ones that popped up was in Kihei."
The application was filed, "and we waited several years until our (construction permit) was finally granted in 2010."
Construction permits allow the grantee three years to get a station built, and KCIK was completed before the August deadline. Once built, the station was signed on for testing and was then turned off so all the data could be submitted to the FCC, "and then we had to wait again for them to give us approval to turn it on and leave it on," Sherman said.
Silva "wanted to have a public ceremony," and he selected Jan. 5 — celebrated by the Catholic Church as the Epiphany of the Lord — to bring the station to life, transmitting Immaculate Heart Radio network programming to Maui, Lanai and Molokai. The station also can be heard in Kaneohe, Sherman said.
The station welcomes reception reports via the IHR website, he said.
DXers, or hobbyists who listen for and identify distant broadcast signals, have reported hearing it as far away as New Zealand, according to longtime Hawaii broadcaster and DXer Brock Whaley.
KCIK is "running 5,000 watts nondirectional day and night," Whaley reported.
The AM signal travels well over water, which AM signals are wont to do. FM signals don’t bounce around the atmosphere in the same way as AM signals.
For those not in a good spot to pick up the station over the air, the IHR network streams live online, has podcasts on its website and is available via mobile apps for various mobile devices.
That Sherman’s latest station was erected in Kihei is a bit of an irony, since he built a home in Kihei 37 years ago.
"I’m really a homebuilder in Lake Tahoe," he said, but "got sidetracked 17 years ago" when he started the first IHR station in the Reno/Lake Tahoe market "and then it snowballed. We now have 31 stations in six Western states including the one on Maui."
One of IHR’s two main policies is "we offer an hour a day to the local bishop for him to develop local programming, or to help develop local programming, so Bishop Silva’s in the process of evaluating" how best to fill the time slot, Sherman said.
Readers of the Hawaii Catholic Herald got a heads-up about the station before the blessed event, as reported by editor Patrick Downes.
IHR founder Sherman "has been working on this for a while, several years," Downes told TheBuzz.
Funds to build the station were raised from Maui parishioners, the Hawaii Catholic Community Foundation and others, Downes reported. Local programming that might appear on the station "is still in the discussion stage."
The call letters, KCIK, have two possible meanings, Sherman said: Christ is king or Christ in Kihei.
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On the Net:
» ihradio.com
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Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.
