Yankton Radio: Sale Of Duhamel Stations Called "Bittersweet"

After a 75-year family legacy of broadcasting in the Black Hills, Bill Duhamel called the sale of his company and five radio stations to a Yankton company "bittersweet."

Bill Duhamel

"Basically, I was getting tired, and I was getting too old," the 80-year-old said of the decision to sell Duhamel Broadcasting. The move comes five years after the company sold its KOTA TV station.

"We set the standard" and kick-started the careers of people who went on to create or work at other radio and TV stations in western Dakota," Duhamel said. "A lot of people trained here," including Tom Brokaw, the former longtime anchor of the NBC Nightly News who interned at KOTA TV when he was a student at the University of South Dakota.

On Jan. 1, Riverfront Broadcasting acquired Duhamel Broadcasting's five radio stations: its flagship KOTA station in Rapid City, KQRQ and KZLK in Rapid City, KDDX in Spearfish and KZZI in Belle Fourche, Duhamel said. He expects the $3.6 million sale, which must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission, to close in May.

Duhamel said five or six national corporations were interested, but he preferred to sell to a family-owned company, according to The Rapid City Journal.

The Duhamel family has been involved in South Dakota business since 1857, when Bill's great-grandfather traveled from Quebec as a teenager to work as a fur trader. The family later became involved in cattle, banking, retail and eventually broadcasting when Helen Duhamel, Bill's mother, became a stockholder in the KOBH radio station — later renamed KOTA.

Helen later bought and saved the station from bankruptcy in 1953 and changed the company's name from Black Hills Broadcasting to Duhamel Broadcasting.