Cajun Radio History

KSIG Crowley began in 1947, arriving at precisely the moment when radio in Acadiana was expanding after World War II. The station was closely tied to The Crowley Daily Signal, the local newspaper whose name supplied the S-I-G call letters. Max Thomas, one of the station’s founding owners, ran the paper and argued that the shared control of newspaper and radio would strengthen both enterprises rather than force them into competition. His partners were Hillman and Clovis Bailey, brothers with deep radio experience. Hillman had been involved with WBKB Rayne in the late 1920s, and both brothers had worked in radio engineering and repair. From its first day, KSIG positioned…

Official site for the Current KSLO (all zydeco!) = https://kslo1053.com/ KSLO Opelousas sits near the center of the old Cajun-radio map, one of the stations where French, music, commerce, and daily rural life overlapped. In the late 1950s, Elizabeth Roberts identified it among the active French broadcasters in Louisiana, and by her count KSLO aired more French music than any other station, about twelve hours a week. A few years later, Roberts found that French had not faded as quickly as many expected; in 1963, KSLO led the state with more than twenty hours a week in French. Its most vivid program was The Blue Room Show, broadcast six mornings…

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. Daily Advertiser (Lafayette), Aug 18, 1947 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…

Official Site = www.kbon.com For radio folks in Louisiana, the prevailing wisdom had long been that Louisiana music was best left to early mornings, weekends, or specialty programs. KBON did not completely escape that pattern, but it broke it more successfully than anyone else. On its air, a traditional Cajun song with accordion and French lyrics might sit between country and classic rock, as if that were the most natural thing in the world. The station went on the air from Eunice in 1997, founded by Paul Marx, a Crowley native raised in a French-speaking household. Marx had served in the Navy in Vietnam, recorded several 45s as a singer,…

KAPB online KAPB Marksville sits on the northern edge of Acadiana, where the border between Cajun country and central Louisiana begins to blur. The station went on the air in 1954, part of the same postwar growth that gave many small towns their own local signal. In Elizabeth Roberts’s late-1950s survey, KAPB was the only station in its immediate region with French programming. Its early manager, Willie Bordelon, hosted The Cajun Hour in the afternoons, mixing French news and music, while the station also carried ten minutes of French prayers each morning. KAPB is also small-town radio in the old sense. Laborde uses voice tracking, but feeds his remote family…