Howard Dashefsky will make his return to KHON-TV as anchor of the 9 p.m. weekday newscast that will debut on Monday, Sept. 8.
The show will air Monday through Friday on KHON and Hawaii’s CW, and will live-stream online at KHON2.com.
Station officials have wanted to add a 9 p.m. newscast "for some time," said General Manager Kristina Lockwood in a statement. "We think the time is right and Howard is the perfect addition to our news team."
The show will compete head-to-head against Hawaii News Now’s 9 p.m. newscast on KFVE-TV anchored by Stephanie Lum.
"I’ve pretty much hit for the cycle," Dashefsky said, using a baseball term to illustrate having worked at all the network-affiliated TV stations in Honolulu during his 28-year career in broadcasting and cable.
He and KHON News Director Lori Silva also have previously worked together. "I respect and admire him as a journalist," she said in a statement.
For the past few years, Dashefsky has been seen via Oceanic Time Warner Cable, hosting high school sporting events on OC 16 and University of Hawaii sports on OC Sports. His regional Emmy Award-winning "Sports People Hawai’"" will continue to air on OC 16, Dashefsky said.
He will continue to do occasional work for both cable channels as time permits. OC Sports General Manager Dan Schmidt said, "Not having Howard is a pretty big hit for us because he’s so good and has been so valuable."
Dashefsky has "had four opportunities to get back in to TV news prior to this," he said, "but this time the stars are aligned and it was a perfect fit and everything just kind of fell into place."
He noted that while several people have left TV news because of their children, his daughters are a main reason he is getting back into the business.
"Next year I’ll have two kids in college," he said.
Dash, as he’s known, first gained public attention as a University of Hawaii baseball player, and started his broadcast career doing sports in 1986 at KGMB-TV with the late Bob Sevey, regarded reverently as the Walter Cronkite of Hawaii TV news. Joe Moore was the main sports anchor at KGMB back then but left to become news anchor at crosstown KHON.
Dashefsky followed Moore and shared the anchor desk as the successor to Les Keiter as weekday sportscaster in 1990, he said.
Not long after that, Dashefsky and Leslie Wilcox debuted Hawaii’s first full-length morning news show on KHON, which "everybody laughed about," saying it would never last.
Later he went to KITV and was there for Y2K, the changeover of the millennium, after which he went to KHNL to anchor news, which he did until KHNL and KGMB entered into their shared services agreement and terminated the employment of many noteworthy names in TV news, including his.
"I’ve always been a big believer that things happen for a reason, that when one door shuts, another one opens," he said.
The door at Oceanic opened for him after that.
"The funny thing is," one of Dashefsky’s daughters and Joe Moore’s son both attended the same high school, both were in theater arts, and she assistant-directed performances Moore’s son was in, he said. "So that’s how our worlds came full circle," he said of himself and Moore.
As for speculation he has been hired to become Moore’s heir-apparent, Dashefsky said, "Frankly, in my discussions … it never came up, and it was irrelevant to my making a decision to go back."
"If (Moore) chooses to stay another three, five or 10 years, so be it, he’s earned that."
A huge difference for Dashefsky will be the wardrobe adjustment.
"The biggest difference now is that I’ll have to be wearing pants," he laughed.
Just to avoid having imaginations run amok, his most recent work has allowed him to wear shorts on camera.
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Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.
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CORRECTION: A previous version of this story reported that "Sports People Hawaii" will migrate to KHON with Dashefsky. It will continue to air on OC 16.
