KAOK

KAOK (1400 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a News Talk Information format. Licensed to Lake Charles, Louisiana, USA, the station serves the Lake Charles area. The station is currently owned by Cumulus Media and features programming from ABC Radio and Premiere Radio Networks.

KAOK began as a member of the "OK Group" which included WAOK, WBOK, and others and was known as serving the African-American community. Thomas Austin Gresham (1921-2015), a 1946 graduate of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge who was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, opened KLOU in Lake Charles and was manager and part owner of KAOK as well. In 1959, he came to Shreveport to manage KRMD and was the executor of the T. B. Lanford estate. Gresham was also a decorated first lieutenant with the 8th Air Force of the United States Army Air Corps in England during World War II. He flew twenty combat missions in B-17 bombers.

Ed J. Prendergast (born 1925) subsequently managed and then purchased the station. He moved to a format considered at the time to be more "mainstream."