The station first signed on the air on May 18, 1988, under the callsign KLTJ; it was founded by Eldred Thomas, who had earlier built radio station KVTT-FM (now KKXT) and television station KLTJ (now KSTR-TV) in Dallas. The station originally operated from studios located in Pasadena and a tower in Anahuac, and initially aired religious programs from a variety of sources, including the PTL Satellite Network, Christian Television Network and the Three Angels Broadcasting Network. The low-power signal and distance from Houston led to reception issues in the northern and western portions of the city; as a result, on May 18, 1989, Thomas moved the KLTJ programming and call letters to channel 22 on a tower based in Alvin. With the move of the KLTJ calls to channel 22, channel 57 changed its callsign to KRTW. It later changed its call letters to KVVV (a callsign formerly used on now-defunct channel 16 from 1968 to 1969) in 1994, when it switched to home shopping programming from Valuevision; it then became a FamilyNet affiliate as KAZH in 2000.
