City Centralia, Washington First air date 1980 (as KELA) | Branding ALT 102.9 | |
Broadcast area Olympia and Tacoma, Washington Slogan Tacoma's Rock Alternative Frequency 102.9 MHz FM (also on HD Radio) 102.9-2 FM-iHeartRadio's "The Classic Rock Channel" | ||
KFOO (102.9 FM) is an alternative rock-formatted radio station serving the Tacoma and Olympia, Washington area. Owned and operated by iHeartMedia, the station is licensed to Centralia, Washington, and the transmitter site is in Capitol State Forest near Olympia, while its studios are located in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle.
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History
This station signed on in 1980 as KELA with a country music format. In 1983, the station changed its callsign to KELA-FM, but only held this callsign for less than a month before the calls changed to KMNT. The country music format and KMNT calls were moved to 104.3 FM in 2005. A new country station would be launched after the move; 102.9 would acquire the KNBQ call letters and would be branded as "Q Country 102.9".
In the 1980s, the call letters KNBQ were on 97.3 (now KIRO-FM), which at the time broadcast a top-40 format and served Tacoma and the South Sound. Famous DJs included Ric Hansen mid-days and Beau "Rockin'" Roberts at night.
On November 4, 2011, at 7 a.m., KNBQ started simulcasting sports talk station KJR, becoming "Sports Radio 950 and 102.9 KJR". The station's calls were not changed because its sister station KJR-FM, located on 95.7 FM, already has them. This is a similar move made by KFRC-FM/San Francisco, WCFS-FM/Chicago, and WSBB-FM/Atlanta after those stations began simulcasting KCBS, WBBM and WSB (respectively) due to their sister stations owning the same calls with the -FM suffix having a different format from the AM counterpart and did not want to transfer them over.
On June 14, 2013, at 10 a.m., KNBQ flipped to Adult Top 40 as "102.9 Now," targeting Olympia and the South Sound region. The first song on "Now" was "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga. The KJR simulcast moved to KJR-FM HD-2. On June 19, 2013, the station took the KYNW call sign. It is noted that both this station and Dallas/Fort Worth area sister station KDMX shared the same branding and logo. Although KDMX flipped to Adult Top 40 in 2012, it was unsuccessful as it reverted to its Hot AC format. Most of the station's airstaff consisted of voicetracked and syndicated shows from Johnjay & Rich (from sister KZZP/Phoenix), On-Air with Ryan Seacrest, Mario Lopez and "The Rendevouz" with Simon Marcel and Kim Iverson. Lori Bradley was the station's only local host, hosting middays from 10am-2pm.
On January 13, 2016, KYNW announced they will be changing formats on January 19 at Noon, and began redirecting listeners to sister station KBKS. At that time, after playing "Hello" by Adele and the first minute of "Counting Stars" by OneRepublic, KYNW's format moved to KBKS (and was modified to a more broad-based Hot AC); at the same time, KYNW flipped to alternative rock as "ALT 102.9." The first song on "ALT" was "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana. The move was part of a format shuffle on four of iheart's Seattle stations, with KBKS's Mainstream Top 40 format moving to 93.3 FM, displacing KUBE's longtime Rhythmic Top 40 format, which would move to KKBW. KKBW's active rock format would be modified to alternative and move to KYNW. On February 5, 2016, KYNW changed call letters to KFOO to match (a nod to locally-founded band Foo Fighters).