The station first signed on the air in March 1949 as WBAP-FM on 100.5 FM under the control of Amon G. Carter. The station moved to 96.3 in 1955. WBAP-FM aired mostly classical music. After the success of sister station WBAP's "Country Gold" format which began in 1970, it was decided to extend the country music brand to FM, and on January 15, 1973, 96.3 was renamed KSCS "Silver Country Stereo". The initial design behind KSCS was to for it be a country station with beautiful music-style formatics, including playing several songs in a row, low-key announcers, and light commercial loads. A year later, Carter Publications sold KSCS to Capital Cities. As FM radio listening started to increase in Dallas/Fort Worth in the mid-1970s, KSCS benefited from being the only country station on the FM dial. The rise in popularity of country music in the late 1970s led to KSCS becoming a dominant station in the ratings. It also brought competition in the form of KPLX which entered the country music market in 1980. KSCS was the number-one radio station overall in Dallas/Fort Worth from 1980 to 1982. The station's ratings started to sag after the Urban Cowboy era faded, and with tough competition from KPLX. In 1988, KSCS hired away KPLX's star morning man Terry Dorsey, and with Dorsey's arrival, the ratings started to rise again, just as country music's popularity started to rise again. KSCS again became the number one station overall in Dallas/Fort Worth in 1990, and stayed there for 14 consecutive ratings periods. To this day, that is still the longest winning streak in Dallas/Fort Worth ratings history. KSCS, along with ABC's other non-Radio Disney and ESPN Radio stations, was sold to Citadel Broadcasting in 2007. In January 2008, KSCS was re-branded as "The Big 96.3"; however, in November 2009, it reverted to its legacy branding in use since the 1980s. On January 4, 2011, at 5 PM, the station once again re-branded as "New Country 96-3 KSCS, Texas' Most Country Guaranteed". Citadel merged with Cumulus Media on September 16, 2011; this made KSCS a sister station to longtime rival KPLX. As of March 23, 2015, KSCS has added pop crossover songs by Rihanna, Kanye West, Paul McCartney, Avicii, Ed Sheeran, Ellie Goulding, and a few other top 40 artists with no ties to the "New Country" format. By Fall 2015, KSCS eliminated the pop crossover songs that could be heard throughout the day, once an hour on average. The station returned to its core "New Country" artists. In mid-July 2019, KSCS rebranded as "New Country 96.3" without the KSCS calls in the branding.
KSCS-HD2
KSCS launched its HD2 substation in 2008 to broadcast "The Texas Twister", a station broadcasting Texas country music, previously on KTYS 96.7. After the Cumulus takeover in 2011, the HD broadcasts were briefly discontinued until mid-2012. The HD2 subchannel was dormant until February 2013 when it began simulcasting KLIF News & Information 570 AM.
