A morning show born in Kansas City barely a year ago is about to wake up New York, and somewhere inside that remarkable sentence is a reminder that great radio can still travel when the personalities are strong enough to make listeners forget how many miles separate them. Audacy has added Jenny and Jagger in the Morning, originating from Country 106.5 The Wolf WDAF-FM in Kansas City, to New York’s Country 94.7 WXBK-HD2, putting Jenny Matthews, Mike Jagger Thomas and Matt Gapske on weekday mornings from 6 to 10 in the nation’s largest radio market. For Jagger, it is a return to the city where he spent more than a decade helping shape two enormous music brands. For Matthews and Gapske, it puts their voices into New York for the first time. And for the three of them together, it is the biggest expansion yet for a morning show Audacy only launched in September 2025.
This isn’t just another affiliate.
THIS IS NEW YORK
Kansas City Meet New York
The arrangement is fascinating before you even get to the personalities.
Jenny and Jagger remains the morning show on 106.5 The Wolf in Kansas City.
That’s home.
That’s where the chemistry is built.
That’s where the local foundation exists.
But beginning with this expansion, the same show is also part of Audacy’s attempt to build a Country product in New York around New York’s Country 94.7, its WXBK HD2 and digital brand. Audacy’s own station site now places Jenny and Jagger directly inside that lineup.
Think about the geography for a second.
Kansas City.
New York City.
About as different as two American radio markets can possibly be.
Barbecue and bagels.
Arrowhead and Yankee Stadium.
I-435 and the Cross Bronx Expressway.
And God help Jagger if he starts giving Kansas City traffic information to somebody trying to get through the Lincoln Tunnel.
😂
But underneath the geography is a bigger programming experiment.
CAN A MORNING SHOW BUILT AROUND PEOPLE TRAVEL
Audacy apparently believes this one can.
And That Says Something About What Jenny Jagger And Matt Have Built
Remember how young this show actually is.
Audacy announced the lineup in August 2025.
Jenny and Jagger officially began waking up Kansas City on September 9.
Jenny Matthews.
Mike Jagger Thomas.
Matt Gapske.
Three radio people with very different résumés suddenly thrown together and told to make mornings work on a Country station.
A year later?
NEW YORK
That’s movement.
But Don’t Call This A Kansas City Show Being Dumped Into New York
That distinction matters.
The best multi-market shows understand that distribution and syndication aren’t synonyms for laziness.
You cannot simply spend four hours talking about something happening three blocks from WDAF and expect somebody in Queens to care.
But you also cannot sterilize everything until the program sounds like it originates from nowhere.
That’s the art.
Keep the personalities.
Keep the chemistry.
Keep the humanity.
Expand the canvas.
And Jenny Matthews Knows Something About Building Relationships
Matthews has been part of Kansas City radio since 2004.
More than two decades.
That’s an eternity in this business.
She didn’t become valuable because somebody created a clever positioning statement.
She became valuable because listeners had years to know her.
That’s how personality radio works.
One morning at a time.
One story at a time.
One laugh at a time.
One terrible day when somebody turns on the radio because they need another human voice in the car.
Those moments accumulate.
Eventually the person behind the microphone isn’t simply the DJ anymore.
They’re Jenny.
Now New York gets introduced.
Matt Gapske Is The Guy Who Helps Make The Circus Run
Gapske brings another layer.
He’s not simply the third microphone.
He’s a programmer and producer.
Audacy identifies him as an Executive Producer and Assistant Program Director in Kansas City, with roots inside the cluster dating to the launch era of 99.7 The Point.
That’s an important ingredient.
Morning radio is controlled chaos.
Or at least the good stuff is.
Somebody still has to know where the train tracks are.
Gapske does.
And now the train goes to New York.
But Jagger Is Where This Story Becomes Full Circle
Because Mike Thomas isn’t arriving in New York for the first time.
He’s going back.
Long before Kansas City Country mornings, Jagger spent years inside two of the most recognizable music stations on the planet.
Z100
and
103.5 KTU
His own syndicated-show biography documents his work at both stations, and historical coverage from 2016 shows the unusual dual role he ultimately held: working nights at WKTU while serving in the music department at Z100.
Think about that combination.
One foot inside a legendary CHR.
Another inside one of America’s most distinctive rhythmic adult brands.
New York music radio.
Day after day.
Year after year.
And Jagger Wasn’t Just Cracking A Microphone
This is where radio people understand the significance.
He was helping pick records.
Music Director at Z100.
In New York City.
That is not a ceremonial title.
Every label wants your attention.
Every manager wants your attention.
Every artist team wants your attention.
Every record has data.
Every record has a story.
Every record is allegedly about to explode.
😂
And somebody eventually has to decide whether it belongs on Z100.
Jagger spent years living inside that machine.
His work there earned industry recognition, including a Music Director of the Year honor during his Z100 tenure.
Now he’s coming back to New York playing
COUNTRY
Radio careers are absolutely insane.
From Z100 To Country 94.7
That’s the part I love.
Because if you wrote Jagger’s New York return twenty years ago, nobody would have predicted this version.
Not Z100.
Not KTU.
Not CHR.
Not Rhythmic AC.
COUNTRY
And not even from a traditional full-market analog FM signal.
This is WXBK-HD2.
Digital distribution.
Streaming.
Audacy.
A completely different way of thinking about what constitutes a radio station and how an audience finds it.
The talent returns.
The technology changes.
And New York Country Has Its Own Complicated History
Anybody who knows New York radio understands that Country has never had the easiest relationship with the market.
Stations have come.
Stations have gone.
Formats have appeared.
Formats have disappeared.
Country listeners didn’t.
That’s the important distinction.
Audacy’s current New York Country operation exists on WXBK’s HD2 channel and digitally, maintaining a Country destination in a market without the kind of primary analog Country FM outlet listeners in Nashville, Dallas or Kansas City take for granted.
The station is active.
There are contests.
Concert connections.
Local information.
Country content.
And now
A MORNING SHOW
Audacy’s site is already presenting Jenny and Jagger as part of the product.
That’s significant.
Because Morning Shows Give Stations Faces
Music is available everywhere.
Country fans in New York do not need Audacy to hear Morgan Wallen.
Or Lainey Wilson.
Or Luke Combs.
Or Jelly Roll.
They can have those songs instantly.
So what’s the differentiator?
PEOPLE
That’s where Jenny and Jagger comes in.
And I Know Something Personally About These People
This is where On The Dial’s relationship with the story becomes different.
Last month, Jenny Matthews and Jagger gave me something considerably more valuable than airtime.
They gave me their microphone.
As many of you know, I am not merely the Publisher of On The Dial.
Behind this website is a person fighting kidney failure and searching for a living donor.
I have survived cancer.
I have survived a bone marrow transplant.
I have survived cancer again.
And now I’m trying to survive this.
On August 24, Jenny and Jagger brought that fight onto 106.5 The Wolf.
They interviewed me.
They talked about the kidney search.
They helped take a deeply personal story and put it in front of people I could never reach by myself.
That mattered.
IT STILL MATTERS
On The Dial has separately documented the larger search and the extraordinary difficulty of finding a compatible donor.
That’s What A Microphone Can Still Do
This industry spends an enormous amount of time talking about reach.
Cume.
AQH.
Downloads.
Streams.
Impressions.
Engagement.
Demo composition.
All important.
But occasionally somebody reminds you what reach actually means.
PEOPLE HEARD
Maybe somebody shared.
Maybe somebody told somebody else.
Maybe somebody considered getting tested.
Maybe somebody prayed.
Maybe the story moved one person closer to the one person I need.
That’s reach too.
Jenny And Jagger Didn’t Have To Do It
Morning shows have clocks.
Guests.
Benchmarks.
Music.
Promotions.
Commercial commitments.
A thousand things competing for four hours.
They made room.
And when you’re the person sitting on the other side of that conversation asking strangers to help save your life
you remember who made room.
So yes, On The Dial is covering Jenny and Jagger’s expansion to New York as an industry story.
But I would be lying if I pretended there isn’t something personal about seeing good things happen to people who did something good for me.
There is.
And Maybe New York Is About To Discover What Kansas City Already Has
A morning show doesn’t become important because of a press release.
It becomes important when people trust the people inside it.
When they laugh with them.
When they disagree with them.
When they yell at the radio.
When they miss them on vacation.
When they hear something serious and stop what they’re doing.
When the people behind the microphones understand that sometimes the most important thing they can do isn’t another contest.
It’s simply
LISTEN
Jenny and Jagger did that for me.
Now they’ll have an entirely new audience to listen to.
The Expansion Also Tells Us Something About Audacy
Look across Audacy’s Country strategy and you can see the architecture.
Katie and Company is distributed broadly.
Rob and Holly travels.
Other personalities appear across multiple company stations.
Audacy’s original announcement for The Wolf identified Katie Neal’s show as airing on dozens of stations and Rob and Holly on more than two dozen.
That infrastructure already exists.
Now Jenny and Jagger takes another step into it.
Kansas City remains the laboratory.
New York becomes another platform.
If it works?
Radio people know what comes next.
This Is How Shows Grow
First one market.
Then another.
Then somebody in another building asks:
Could that work here
That’s how syndication has always started.
The technology changes.
The question doesn’t.
And Jagger Already Understands That World Too
His Weekend Throwdown has been distributed nationally for years.
Audacy said it was already heard in more than 45 cities when it introduced the Kansas City morning show last year.
So Jagger understands the peculiar skill of talking to somebody who may be listening in a city you cannot see from the studio window.
Now that experience becomes extremely useful.
Because the morning show has to wake up Kansas City while simultaneously welcoming New York.
That’s not easy.
But it’s fascinating radio.
The On The Dial Perspective
This is the kind of expansion I want to watch.
Not because New York automatically validates anything.
A bad radio show in Market 30 is still a bad radio show in Market 1.
A great show doesn’t suddenly become great because somebody added a New York affiliate.
The interesting part is why Audacy believes the show travels.
Three personalities.
Chemistry.
Storytelling.
Country lifestyle.
Entertainment.
And enough flexibility to exist beyond one ZIP code.
That’s the bet.
And For Jagger This Has To Feel Different
Imagine leaving New York after twelve years.
Life happens.
Hartford.
Indianapolis.
Kansas City.
Programming jobs.
Syndication.
Different companies.
Different stations.
Different formats.
Then one morning somebody tells you:
You’re going back to New York
Not physically.
Your voice.
Your show.
Your work.
Back in the city where so much of your career was built.
But this time you aren’t sitting alone in the WKTU studio.
You’re bringing Jenny.
You’re bringing Matt.
You’re bringing Kansas City.
And you’re bringing a Country morning show.
That is one hell of a homecoming.
And Jenny Matthews Gets New York
A Kansas City personality whose relationship with her home market stretches back more than twenty years is suddenly waking up listeners in Manhattan.
Brooklyn.
Queens.
The Bronx.
Staten Island.
Long Island.
Northern New Jersey.
And wherever else listeners find New York’s Country 94.7 digitally.
That’s pretty damn cool.
Matt Gapske Gets New York Too
The guy who has spent years producing, programming and making other people sound good gets another enormous market added to the daily assignment.
And somewhere in Kansas City, three people will open the microphones tomorrow morning knowing something has changed.
The room is the same.
The board is the same.
The microphones are the same.
The coffee is probably the same.
But the audience?
BIGGER
And Somewhere In New York Jagger Is Back
Not the same Jagger who left.
That’s impossible.
Ten years happened.
Life happened.
Radio happened.
He’s coming back with more experience.
A different format.
Different partners.
A different company.
A different show.
Maybe that’s the best kind of return.
Not trying to recreate what you were.
Showing people what you became.
So From On The Dial This One Is Personal
Jenny.
Jagger.
Matt.
Congratulations.
When I needed a microphone, you shared yours.
When I needed people to hear my story, you helped them hear it.
When my family and I were searching desperately for one compatible kidney donor, you used the thing radio people possess that can still change lives.
REACH
I’ll never forget that.
And now your reach just got a hell of a lot bigger.
Kansas City in the morning.
New York in the morning.
One show.
Three radio people.
And one familiar voice returning to the biggest radio market in America after a decade away.
Jagger is back in New York.
But this time
HE BROUGHT JENNY AND MATT WITH HIM
Turn it up, New York.
Kansas City has been keeping these three to itself long enough.
On The Dial
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