102.5 KZOK is Seattle's classic rock station today, but the frequency it sits on has cycled through country, Top 40, receivership and free-form progressive rock before anyone settled on the format that stuck. What survived all of that change is a station that has spent decades finding personalities big enough to match the music.
A Signal That Started as Something Else Entirely
The station signed on in December 1964 as KTW-FM under owner David Segal, who branded it "The Wonderful Sound of Seattle" and ran it through Top 40 and country formats before the station landed in receivership around 1970 amid ownership disputes and tax trouble, according to the station's documented history. Nothing about those first six years suggested the frequency would end up defining classic rock for the city.
Rebuilt as KZOK and Turned Loose
The rebrand to KZOK-FM came in 1974, paired with a shift to free-form progressive rock aimed squarely at a younger audience than the old country and Top 40 format had reached. By August 1975 the station had tightened that free-form approach into album-oriented rock with broader commercial appeal, a format successful enough that sister station KJET on the AM dial adopted modern rock in 1982 to run alongside it.
One Failed Experiment Before Finding the Format for Good
KZOK tried a soft rock and adult album alternative sound in 1985, and it did not work. The station pivoted to classic rock that October, a format it has run continuously since, outlasting every other direction it tried across two decades of format hopping on the same signal.
Bob Rivers Brought 25 Years of Twisted Tunes
Bob Rivers built his reputation on KISW with Bob Rivers Twisted Radio starting in 1989, mixing comedy and rock with his Twisted Tunes song parodies that went on to sell millions of copies, before moving the show, renamed The Bob Rivers Show, to KZOK in September 2001. Alongside co-hosts Spike O'Neill and Joe Bryant, the show ran on KZOK through September 30, 2010, and was often the most-listened-to adult morning show in Seattle across its full 25-year run, a legacy the station itself memorialized when Rivers, a Radio Hall of Fame inductee, passed away in March 2025.
A Partridge Turned Morning Host for 12 Years
KZOK's next big personality swing came from an unlikely direction, actor Danny Bonaduce, known for his childhood role on The Partridge Family, took over mornings on the station in 2011. He stayed twelve years, retiring in December 2023 after health issues forced the decision, closing out a run that local news outlets covered as the end of an era for the station's morning slot.
Sixty years after a country station called KTW-FM first went on air, KZOK has landed on the one format that has actually held, held long enough to build two separate 25-year and 12-year runs of Seattle radio personalities that listeners kept coming back for. The frequency changed names and formats more times than most stations ever do, and classic rock is the one that finally stuck.