| City of license | Houma, Louisiana |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | New Orleans metropolitan area Baton Rouge, Louisiana |
| Branding | Voodoo 104 |
| Slogan | Retro, Rock, Dance, & Everything In Between |
| Frequency | 104.1 (MHz) (also on HD Radio) |
| First air date | 1968 |
| Format | Adult Top 40/Retro hits HD2: New Rock(HD) |
| ERP | 100,000 watts |
| HAAT | 593 meters |
| Class | C |
| Facility ID | 34528 |
| Callsign meaning | K Voo DU (a play on the "doo" in Voodoo) |
| Former callsigns | KHOM (1968-1998) KUMX (1998-2001) KFXN-FM (2001-2002) KSTE-FM (2002-2005) KHEV (2005-2006) KYRK (2006-2010) KOBW (2010-2011) |
| Owner | Clear Channel Communications (Clear Channel Broadcasting Licenses, Inc.) |
| Sister stations | WNOE-FM, WODT, WQUE, WRNO-FM, WYLD, WYLD-FM |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | Voodoo 1041.com |
KVDU (Voodoo 104.1) is a Retro-themed Adult Top 40 outlet serving the New Orleans area. The Clear Channel Communications station is licensed to Houma, Louisiana and broadcasts at 104.1 MHz with an ERP of 100 kW.
When 104.1 originally signed on the air 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 Clear Channel Communications, who also owned/acquired four other FM's; WQUE, WYLD-FM, WNOE, 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 returned as 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, then on Friday, June 29, 2001, it played its last song as "Mix"; "When It's Over" by Sugar Ray. It then spent the day getting people ready for a change by making repeated announcements over construction site sound effects. It told people to listen in at 5pm to hear the debut of a brand new radio station. It flipped to Classic Rock as "104-1 The Fox" (under new calls KFXN-FM) 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. In 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 the writing was already on the wall. In July 2005, it flipped to a Gospel format as "Hallelujah 104.1", under new calls KHEV.
After 13 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 Classic Rock 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, KYRK changed their format to classic rock, branded as "104.1 The Brew". It has also applied for the new call letters KOBW to match the "Brew" handle. 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. Unfortunately, the ratings for "The Brew" were not as promising.
On June 30, 2011, 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 Brew's final song was "It's The End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" by R.E.M., while Voodoo's first song was "Let's Get It Started" by The Black Eyed Peas. On July 1, 2011 KOBW changed their call letters to KVDU to go with the "Voodoo 104" branding.
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