KQDI (1450 AM, "NewsTalk 1450") is a

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 radi ...

broadcasting a

News Talk Information Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues and consisting entirely or almost entirely of original spoken word content rather than outside music. Most shows are regularly hosted by a single individual, and often featur ...

format. Licensed to

Great Falls, Montana Great Falls is the third most populous city in the U.S. state of Montana and the county seat of Cascade County. The population was 60,442 according to the 2020 census. The city covers an area of and is the principal city of the Great Falls, M ...

, United States, the station serves the Great Falls area. The station is currently owned by STARadio Corporation and features programming from

Westwood One Westwood One is an American radio network owned by Cumulus Media. The company syndicates talk, music, and sports programming. The company takes its name from an earlier network also named Westwood One, a company founded in 1978. The company w ...

CNN Radio CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour United States cable news, ...

and

Premiere Radio Networks Premiere Networks (formerly Premiere Radio Networks, shortened as PRN) is an American media company, a wholly owned subsidiary of iHeartMedia, for which it currently serves as its main original radio content distribution and production arm. I ...

History

KBGF and KUDI

KQDI went on the air as KBGF on September 23, 1955. It was owned by Community Broadcasters, Inc., a group of local businessmen, and was the city's fourth radio station. The call letters stood for "Keep Building Great Falls". From its inception, it operated as a contemporary

Top 40 In the music industry, the Top 40 is the current, 40 most-popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast popular music. Record charts have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "Top 40" or "conte ...

music radio station. KBGF was sold to a group of

Washington state Washington (), officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. Named for George Washington—the first U.S. president—the state was formed from the western part of the Washingto ...

radio owners and operators in January 1957. The group included Paul Crain, Del Cody, Walter N. Nelskog, and D. Gene Williams. The sale was approved by the

FCC The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdictio ...

in July 1957, and the call letters changed to KUDI. The new call letters were an acronym for "Keep Up Doing It". Crain, who owned a financial interest in television station

KRTV KRTV (channel 3) is a television station in Great Falls, Montana, United States, affiliated with CBS and The CW Plus. It is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company alongside KTGF-LD (channel 50), the local NBC affiliate, and is part of the Montana Te ...

in Great Falls and television station KULR in Billings, eventually bought out his partners. He sold the station in May 1961 for $300,000 ($ in dollars) to James F. Hadlock of

Hollywood, California Hollywood is a neighborhood in the Central Los Angeles, central region of Los Angeles, California. Its name has come to be a metonymy, shorthand reference for the Cinema of the United States, U.S. film industry and the people associated with i ...

. The station suffered a fire on April 5, 1964, that completely destroyed its studio and transmitter building on Smelter Avenue; several business records were protected in a filing cabinet, but the station lost its entire record library Hadlock sold the station to Leo Graybill of Great Falls in 1965. Graybill established Frontier Broadcasting to own the business, with stock in Frontier owned by his family. In the early 1970s, the Graybill family sold some stock to KUDI's general manager, Jerry Hartline. KUDI was regularly ranked second in listeners in the Great Falls market in the late 1960s and 1970s behind KMON (560 AM). KEIN (1310 AM) changed its format to Top 40 after a change in ownership in 1972 and quickly began gaining on KUDI. Independent since its inception, KUDI affiliated with the

CBS Radio Network CBS News Radio, formerly known as CBS Radio News and historically known as the CBS Radio Network, is a radio network that provides news to more than 1,000 radio stations throughout the United States. The network is owned by Paramount Global. ...

in 1974. Robert Schuster, a former life insurance agent, replaced Hartline as general manager in August 1975.

KQDI

Frontier Broadcasting sold KUDI to Sun River Broadcasting in January 1976. Sun River Broadcasting was owned by Tom Ingstad and Bob Lockhart. Ingstad was a member of a family which owned Ingstad Broadcasting, a privately-held company that owned radio stations in

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the List of U.S. states and territories by population, 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minne ...

North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, S ...

, and

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...

. The sale was approved by the FCC on July 30, 1976. KUDI signed off the air on September 3, 1976. The station went back on the air on September 15, 1976 as KQDI. During the 12 days of broadcasting silence, the station made major studio and transmitter improvements. As "The New Q", KQDI deemphasized news and information in favor of a Top 40-only format. Sun River also bought KOPR-FM 106.3 and changed its call letters to KOOZ in 1977; that station aired an easy listening format for much of the next 12 years, except for a brief period in late 1984 and 1985 when it was

-formatted KQDI-FM. On January 1, 1989, the rock format permanently moved to FM and 106.1 became KQDI-FM, with the former FM format appearing on AM. Both stations were devastated when the Scan-Am Building downtown, which housed KQDI-AM-FM and other businesses, burned to the ground on July 27, 1989. It was the second fire in the history of KUDI/KQDI. It took three months to return the FM to the air and another month for the AM outlet.

KMSL

The station changed its call letters to KMSL on August 7, 1992. On September 3, 1997, the station changed its

call sign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assig ...

back to the current KQDI.

Ownership

In June 2006, a deal was reached by Fisher Radio Regional Group to sell KQDI to Cherry Creek Radio as part of a 24 station deal with a total reported sale price of $33.3 million. The deal was never completed.

References

External links

* {{News/Talk Radio Stations in Montana QDI Radio stations established in 1955 1955 establishments in Montana