KMDL (97.3 FM, "97.3 The Dawg") is a

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...

-formatted

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...

Lafayette, Louisiana Lafayette (, ) is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana, and the most populous city and parish seat of Lafayette Parish, located along the Vermilion River. It is Louisiana's fourth largest incorporated municipality by population and the 234th- ...

. It is owned by

Townsquare Media Townsquare Media, Inc. (formerly Regent Communications until 2010) is an American radio network and media company based in Purchase, New York. The company started in radio and expanded into digital media toward the end of the 2000s, starting wi ...

. Its studios are located on Bertrand Road in Lafayette, and its transmitter is located south of

Youngsville, Louisiana Youngsville is a city in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, United States, and is part of the Lafayette metropolitan statistical area. The population was 8,105 at the 2010 U.S. census, and 15,929 at the 2020 United States census. Youngsville was the bi ...

. The station is an affiliate of the

New Orleans Saints The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team based in New Orleans. The Saints compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. Since 1975, the te ...

radio network.

History

KMDL began broadcasting August 1, 1981 with 3,000

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Wa ...

s at 97.7.Broadcasting/Cablecasting Yearbook 1984 When KMDL signed on, it was a local Kaplan station with a marginal signal over the Lafayette market. In 1991, in an effort to better serve the market as a whole, KMDL upgraded to 40,000 watts and moved to 97.5. The move lasted for a short time, however, as interference forced the station to move back to 97.7 until it was found that the station could move to 97.3 interference-free. KMDL has been in a country format since first signing on as "K-Middle," in reference to 97.7 appearing in the middle of the dial on an analog radio. After moving to 97.3, KMDL dropped the "K-Middle" branding and identified only using frequency and call letters until shifting from a traditional country format to a current hit-based country format in September 1995, at which it began identifying as "the Dawg," a reference to

USL The USL Championship (USLC) is a professional men's soccer league in the United States that began its inaugural season in 2011. The USL is sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation (U.S. Soccer) as a Division II league since 2017, p ...

's then-Bulldog mascot.

HD radio

Ibiquity iBiquity Digital Corporation is a company formed by the merger of USA Digital Radio and Lucent Digital Radio. Based in Columbia, Maryland, with additional offices in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and Auburn Hills, Michigan, iBiquity is a privately ...

-licensed station, KMDL began broadcasting

HD Radio HD Radio (HDR) is a trademark for an in-band on-channel (IBOC) digital radio broadcast technology. It generally simulcasts an existing analog radio station in digital format with less noise and with additional text information. HD Radio is used ...

in November 2007. Currently, KMDL does not multicast.

References

External links

{{coord, 30.049, N, 91.997, W, type:landmark_region:US_source:FCC, display=title Radio stations in Louisiana Country radio stations in the United States Townsquare Media radio stations