KVOR-FM

KVOR-FM was the original identity of Colorado Springs’ 92.9 FM facility. It signed on in 1960 as the FM companion to KVOR 1300 AM.

Early operation

The 1969 Broadcasting Yearbook listed KVOR-FM on 92.9 MHz at 1.35 kW and described it as duplicating KVOR’s programming. That simulcast relationship places the FM squarely within the historic “Voice of the Rockies” operation.

Brookside and the transition to Z93

A former employee who worked at the KVOR/KVOR-FM operation from 1973 through 1978 remembers the stations at 615 E. Brookside Street. He describes a purpose-built facility in which the production/broadcast side and the business/sales side were acoustically isolated from one another by a roughly two-inch rubber gasket between the joined structures. The contributor also remembers Brookside Street dead-ending into the station parking lot.

During his tenure, KVOR-FM became KSPZ and launched the Z93 identity. The employee remembers the switch as a near-total break from the earlier sound, with the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” as the first song of the new format. Because this first-song detail comes from participant memory rather than a surviving log, it is presented as oral history.

Later identity

The station became KSPZ in 1974 and adopted the “Z93” identity using Century 21’s Z Format. The same 92.9 facility eventually became KKPK.

Call-sign lineage

KVOR-FM → KSPZ → KKPK

Sources

• Broadcasting Yearbook 1969 — Colorado Springs listings
• Standard Rate & Data Service, November 1968 — KVOR/KVOR-FM listing
• Broadcasting Yearbook 1990 — KSPZ facility history
• Former KVOR/KSPZ employee, first-person oral-history contribution to the Colorado Radio Archive, October 2026 — Brookside facility and KVOR-FM-to-Z93 transition.
• 92.9 facility history — 1974 KSPZ call change and Century 21 Z Format.