This opened the door for Honolulu attorney Warren Higa to lead a hostile takeover of KOHO by controlling the shares of the Times, electing a new slate of directors in 1986.
[8] Shortly after the United Airlines Flight 811 incident occurred in 1989, a KOHO spokesman reported receiving a bomb threat via phone the previous month.
The station, still owned by the defunct Times and general manager Harumi Oshita, was sold in 1998 to Da Kine Broadcasting for $100,000.
[11] The next year, Da Kine sold the station to Legacy Communications of St. George, Utah, as its first Hawaiian radio property.
There were multiple changes of call sign, and the station was silent more than it was operating because of issues finding an appropriate transmitter site.
[17] The new facilities, conceived to protect the FCC monitoring station at Waipahu, were not built, and the construction permit expired.
On September 23, 2008, KORL signed off the air to make way for the sign-on of sister station KPHI, whose 1130 frequency offers a better signal coverage on the island and whose construction permit was about to expire.
On September 17, 2009, Hochman-McCain announced that it had sold KORL to Centro Cristiano Vida Abundante, a religious broadcaster from California whose programming targets a Hispanic audience.