TheBuzz Erika Engle

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KOHO radio call letters resurface in Washington state

CALL LETTERS from Hawaii's radio history are being sported by an eclectic FM station in Leavenworth, Wash. People of a certain age will remember when KOHO-AM 1170 was one of two radio stations broadcasting Japanese programming on the AM dial into the 1990s.

The Washington state version of KOHO is nothing like the former Hawaii station, and plays adult alternative and acoustic music, jazz and blues.

By 1995, Hawaii's KOHO had disappeared from listings of Oahu radio stations that were posted on early online bulletin boards, such as Technotronic and H4, according to an archive at www.hawaiiradiotv.com. The reasons for its disappearance are unclear.

In 1999, Utah-based Legacy Communications Corp. bought the station from Da Kine Broadcasting and its call letters changed several times until the station, then silent, was sold again in 2003 to California-based Salem Communications Corp.

That left the familiar KOHO call letters available for Washington-based Icicle Broadcasting Corp., which owns and operates the Leavenworth station at 101.1 on the area's FM dial.

More calls, more work

Former KGMB-TV Sports Director Larry Beil will be adding another set of call letters to his life, as the San Francisco sportscaster will have an additional assignment after the new year.

Beil's main gig is working as sports anchor and reporter for KGO-TV, an ABC-owned and -operated station in the Bay Area. But TV Business Confidential, an industry newsletter, reported this week that Beil and some KGO co-workers would also be putting together a newscast starting Jan. 8 for KBWB-TV, an independent, non-affiliated station owned by New York-based Granite Broadcasting Corp.

"We're going to give them a one-hour newscast every day," Beil said. The newscast will air at 9 p.m., a time slot vacated by another station, "so we're jumping on it."