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Finally, We’re Going to Find Out if Philadelphia is Big Enough for Two Country Music Stations

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Oct 21st, 2026 · 2:44 PM EDT

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Some folks sent this over earlier in the week. Audacy flipped one of its Philly stations:

WTDY is now US 96.5: Philly’s New Home for Country.

The Audacy-owned station is flipping from pop to country, the No. 1 format in music radio.

You’ll hear artists like Ella Langley, Luke Combs, Jelly Roll, and Morgan Wallen, who teamed up with Post Malone for “I Had Some Help,” the first song played on Philadelphia’s newest radio station.

US 96.5 will be commercial-free until Saturday, Oct. 24.

Audacy said “country music has a special way of connecting people,” and the company is excited to bring “more world-class entertainment” to listeners here.

US 96.5 is Audacy’s 24th country station in the nation.

I listened to about 15 minutes on Wednesday before ripping off my headphones and throwing them across the room in disgust, like Mike Missanelli after arguing with Natalie and Tyrone about the racist bird-watching lady in New York City. It started with a Riley Green song, then they played Shania Twain’s “Man I Feel Like a Woman” before segueing into a Luke Bryan joint called “Country and She Knows It.”

It’s funny on the surface to think about country music in Philadelphia. It seems like you have two things that don’t go together at all. Philly is northern and urban and gritty and full of Democrats. County music is southern and white and Republican, or so we’re led to believe. Those are the stereotypes we’ve always thought about, like people don’t wear cowboy hats and drive big trucks around here, then you go out into Upper Bucks and Montco and Chesco and realize that the hinterlands creep up on you real fast, which I guess speaks to the idea that you don’t have to be southern to be country.

Case in point – WXTU does well for Beasley. That’s 92.5 on the FM dial. They’re live all day long with Andie Summers, Jen Scordo, and then Nicole Michalik. That’s 5:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. And these huge country acts come around and fill up Lincoln Financial Field and the Camden music venue. I went down to Fern Rock over the summer to get on the Broad Street Line and there were TONS of white women in cowboy boots and white dresses on the subway. It was incredible. “What the hell is going on?” Then I looked at my phone and realized that Morgan Wallen was in town that night. Riley Cooper may even have been in the crowd, trying to fight everybody there.

Of course, if you live in a huge metropolitan region like this one, there’s going to be enough people to make up a legitimate audience for anything. Country music might be bigger in Nashville than it is up here, but we happen to have 6 million people in the 10-county region surrounding Philadelphia proper. That’s enough to fill up the Linc for Kenny Chesney and keep WXTU rolling.

Is it enough for two country stations? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Regardless, it’s interesting to think about 96.5 flipping formats, because Audacy was previously going with this Pop/Hot AC format which was a little duplicative when you consider that the company also owns B101 and iHeart is programming Q102 and alt 104.5 at the same time. If they’re looking for a different lane to occupy, country is less saturated in this market, because there was only XTU previously. There are several pop and pop-adjacent stations already.

Funny enough, Beasley originally owned XTU before they traded it to CBS Radio back in 2014. Then Beasley re-acquired XTU in 2018, after the Entercom merger. That was at the same time Audacy purchased B101 from Jerry Lee Radio LLC.

So both Audacy and Beasley have owned XTU over the years, now each company has its own country music station. Yeehaw! Lets giddy up and ride! I’m gonna drink a beer and drive my truck and put on a pair of jeans that fit just right.