KROF Abbeville

KROF Abbeville belongs to the postwar boom, when new local stations gave Acadiana more than distant signals from New Orleans, Shreveport, or Texas. It went on the air in 1948, one of the key stations that Elizabeth Roberts later identified in her 1959 survey of French-language broadcasting.

Abbeville was a natural home for such a station: close enough to Lafayette to matter, but rooted in Vermilion Parish’s own French-speaking public. Its most famous voice was Dudley J. LeBlanc. Politician, patent-medicine salesman, promoter, and Acadian spokesman, LeBlanc had begun giving French news on regional radio years earlier, but KROF eventually became his headquarters.  The recordings of Dudley LeBlanc that we have are from his later years at KROF. KROF later became Camey Doucet’s on-air home for decades.

Cool site with some old photos and newspaper clippings about KROF.