After beating out Springfield Television for the construction permit in 1981, Spokane native Robert Hamacher, a former employee of KREM-TV and later an executive at KSTW in Tacoma, put KAYU on the air on October 31, 1982. It was Spokane's first independent station and the first new commercial station to sign on in the area since KREM-TV began broadcasting 28 years earlier. It is also the oldest non-Big Three station in the eastern part of the state. It joined Fox as a charter affiliate on October 9, 1986.