The Federal Communications Commission has canceled a Honolulu radio station’s broadcast license.

That almost never happens.

Cancellations are a rarity given how arduous, lengthy and costly a process it is to obtain a broadcast license.

KORL-AM 1180 owner and licensee James L. Primm, an attorney based in California, had taken the station silent, or off the air temporarily, multiple times, citing such things as technical issues and lease problems in filings with the FCC. On Oct. 7, 2013, he took it off the air and it never came back.

In recent years, companies have paid millions of dollars at FCC auctions for the right to spend even more money to build and operate new radio stations.

It can cost significantly less to buy an existing station, depending on the station.

In 2011, Primm paid California-based religious broadcaster Centro Cristiano Vida Abundante Inc. $37,000 for the station KORL had come to be.

The FCC sent Primm a letter dated March 23 notifying him that since the station had been silent since October 2013, its license expired as a matter of law in October 2014. Lacking any reply from Primm, the station’s license was officially canceled by the commission on May 5.

Primm could not be reached via phone numbers or an email address he listed on FCC applications.

The station’s call letters are referred to by broadcasters as "heritage calls," because of their longevity and longtime prominence in Ho- nolulu radio back when it was at 650 on the AM dial, especially in the 1960s and ’70s.

Big personalities with big names in Honolulu radio —Tom "Dynamite" Dancer, Ted Sax and Stephen B. Williams, to skim the surface — did daily battle at KORL-AM 650 against other big-personality competitors on KGMB-AM 590, KKUA-AM 690 and KPOI-AM 1380, back before FM radio meant anything other than "elevator music."

Other personalities including "Captain" Dan Cooke (yes, of Hawaii News Now "Sunrise") worked at the station in the early days of their broadcast careers.

Since those days, the call letters associated with 650 AM have changed frequently, as has the ownership, from KORL to KHNR to KRTR to KPRP.

The original KORL, first licensed in 1947, started out as KPOA.

Longtime broadcaster Ron Jacobs remembers that the station was saddled with the unfortunate call letters KAKA at one time.

"The station was infamously stuck with that until the FCC allowed the next change to KORL," he said, via a social media post.

According to an FCC history card, the actual call letters were KKAA. Those call letters only lasted four months before they were changed to KORL in October 1960.

The former station at 1180 AM underwent even more ownership and call letter changes than did the original KORL-AM 650.

First licensed in 1960 to the Windward Broadcasting Co. Ltd., 1180 AM was initially at 1170 on the AM dial with the call letters KOHO-AM. It gained prominence with Japanese language programming under the ownership of Cosmopolitan Broadcasting Corp. and later, under Hawaii Times Ltd. It changed call letters seven times before it took on the KORL call sign in 2006.

Those heritage KORL calls are now back in the FCC’s call letter pot, and likely will be snapped up by a broadcaster looking to rebrand a station in a state west of the Mississippi River, where call signs starting with the letter "K" are assigned. Calls beginning with "W" are assigned east of the Mississippi.

Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com, or on Twitter as @erikaengle.