Rather than repoint its satellite dishes as every other radio station that relied on network delivery had to do by the end of June, Pacific Media Group decided to take Sports “ESPN Hawaii” 850 KHLO Hilo/790 KKON Kealakekua HI silent.
Josh Pacheco, who hosted a local midday show, will remain with Pacific Media Group as News Director of its Hilo cluster and host a one hour show for sister “ESPN 1420” KKEA Honolulu from 12-1pm daily. KHLO/KKON carried UH-Hilo, UH-Manoa, Big Island Interscholastic Federation, and St. Louis Cardinals play-by-play.
A Silent STA filing confirmed the reasoning for the stations shutting down.
LICENSEE’S PROGRAMMING SOURCE HAS ALTERED ITS PROGRAMMING DELIVERY OPTIONS TO UTILIZE INCOMPATIBLE EQUIPMENT.
All satellite dishes had been required to be repointed by June 30 to receive the AMC-18 satellite as opposed to AMC-8 as the latter satellite was taken out of service.
Nathan Obral 
T C Thomas 
Eric Jon Magnuson 
Joseph_Gallant 
How hard is it to repoint a satellite dish? And seeing as how KKEA is still on the air, why didn’t they just turn KHLO/KKON into a straight simulcast of KKEA, even on a temporary basis?
This just sounds like a convenient excuse for something else.
I agree.
I also agree: Running a full (or nearly full) simulcast here might not be the easiest thing over the long haul (considering that KHLO and KKON are on a different island from KKEA), but they apparently have no issue with either feeding a long-form daily program in the other direction or repointing KKEA’s dish. I’m not an expert at reading satellite maps, but it looks like AMC-18 does cover all of Hawaii–including both Oahu (KKEA) and the Big Island (KHLO and KKON).
This sounds like a silly reason to go off the air.