City Houma, Louisiana Slogan '90s to Now | Branding Voodoo 104 | |
Broadcast area New Orleans metropolitan area
Baton Rouge, Louisiana Frequency 104.1 MHz (also on HD Radio) First air date November 15, 1968 (as KHOM-FM) | ||
KVDU (104.1 FM, "Voodoo 104") is an Adult Top 40 leaning Hot AC outlet serving the New Orleans, Louisiana area. The iHeartMedia, Inc. station is licensed to Houma, Louisiana and broadcasts at 104.1 MHz with an ERP of 100 kW. Its transmitter is located in South Vacherie, Louisiana, and its studios are located in New Orleans Central Business District.
History
When 104.1 originally signed on the air on November 15, 1968, it was KHOM-FM. It was licensed to Houma, Louisiana and only targeted that area, but in 1989, it moved its transmitter atop the 2,000 foot 92.3 (WCKW-FM) tower in Vacherie, Louisiana, allowing the signal to penetrate into the New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas, as well as the Lafayette area and many counties in Mississippi. The station remained licensed to Houma, but dropped the MOR format for oldies, which is how it remained until late 1994 when B-97 (WEZB-FM) abandoned their Top 40 programming in favor of News/Hot Talk. The owner, Raymond A. Saadi, decided to leave the suffering oldies format and fill the vacant Top 40 slot as "Mix 104.1." The station kept the heritage KHOM calls for a period of time, then eventually changed them to KUMX to reflect the "Mix" format. The station was later bought by iHeartMedia (then known as Clear Channel Communications), who also owned/acquired four other FM's; WQUE-FM, WYLD-FM, WNOE-FM, and KMEZ, which was KKND (Alternative rock) at the time, and located at 106.7 on the FM dial. Because Clear Channel owned other stations in the market, they tightened Mix 104.1's playlist in order to avoid crossing into their other stations' audience.
The move to Top 40 paid off ratings-wise until 2000 when WEZB-FM fully evolved back into the original Top 40 outlet in New Orleans. At this point, the playlist on Mix 104.1 had been extremely small for some time. People in the New Orleans area responded to the tight playlist and the heritage Top 40's return by making the switch back to WEZB-FM. The ratings fell and continued to slowly fall. On June 29, 2001, at 6 AM, "Mix" signed off with "When It's Over" by Sugar Ray. It then began stunting with construction sound effects. It flipped to classic rock as "104-1 The Fox" (under new calls KFXN-FM) at 5 PM that same day, and debuted with an "All Beatles Weekend." The first song played was "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Unfortunately, the new format quickly turned out to be a dismal failure. On July 26, 2002, it returned to top 40 as the adult-leaning "104.1 KISS-FM" (under new calls KSTE-FM) but wasn't getting the audience it needed to stay afloat. By November 2003, it shifted to Rhythmic Top 40, but this didn't help their ratings. In July 2005, it flipped to an urban gospel format as "Hallelujah 104.1", under new calls KHEV.
After 16 months in the gospel format, Clear Channel decided to replace it with active rock on November 13, 2006, and in the process, inherited "The Rock of New Orleans" slogan from sister station WRNO-FM, who on the same day dropped their heritage rock/classic rock format for all-talk.
On November 20, 2006, Clear Channel decided to keep the WRNO calls at 99.5 and replace the KHEV calls with the new calls KYRK.
On July 1, 2010, at 3 p.m., after playing "It's The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" by R.E.M., KYRK changed their format to classic rock, branded as "104.1 The Brew". The first song on "The Brew" was "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC. The station's former format was moved to their HD2 signal at that time. On July 19, 2010, KYRK changed their call letters to KOBW to go with the "The Brew" branding. "The Brew" was positioned as "Classic Rock for a New Generation", which played mostly late 60s, 70s, 80s, and early 90s classic rock tracks. Unfortunately, the ratings for "The Brew" were not as promising.
On June 30, 2011, at Noon, after again playing "It's The End of the World As We Know It", KOBW changed their format to a "GenX"-type adult top 40 format as "Voodoo 104", with emphasis on retro-themed hits from the late 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, along with current hits, using the slogan "Retro, Rock, Dance, & Everything In Between". The first song on 'Voodoo" was "Let's Get It Started" by The Black Eyed Peas. The following day, KOBW changed their call letters to KVDU to go with the "Voodoo 104" branding.
As of January 2012, KVDU has begun shifting towards a conventional Adult CHR direction with most of the retro and "Gen X" songs being reduced and more currents being played. A majority of the currents tend to lean Rhythmic, but do balance out with Hot AC tracks in the mix.
As of early 2014, the station dropped the "Retro, Rock, Dance, & Everything In Between" slogan in favor of the new slogan "90's to Now."
KVDU currently reports to Mediabase as a Hot AC station, but also employs some CHR product, such as Rihanna's Needed Me.