| City of license | Whitstable |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Maidstone, Medway, East and West Kent |
| Slogan | More Music Variety |
| Frequency | 95.9, 96.1, 97.0, 102.8 and 103.1 MHz |
| First air date | 1 October 1984 |
| Audience share | 10.9% (March 2011, [2]) |
| Owner | Global Radio |
| Website | Heart Kent |
Heart Kent (previously Invicta FM) is an Independent Local Radio Station broadcasting to the county of Kent, England. It was rebranded in June 2009 and is now part of Global Radio's Heart Network.
The station has been broadcasting for nearly 25 years, subsequently being owned by Southern Radio plc, Capital Radio plc and GCap Media plc.
It is located in the John Wilson Business Park Whitstable.
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In the early 80s, two companies won the right to run radio stations in Kent. East Kent was going to be served by Network East Kent, while West Kent was to get Northdown Radio. Following problems before launch, possibly brought on by the 1984 recession, the Independent Broadcasting Authority agreed to the two companies merging. The new company acquired an unsuccessful applicant for the East Kent licence, Radio Invicta Ltd, which owned the lease on a building in Canterbury which was to become the company's headquarters. (For many months, signage on the side of the building stated "Acquired by Radio Invicta". The word "Invicta" means "Unconquered" in Latin and is the motto of Kent.
The newly-created company was known as Invicta Sound plc and was independently owned by a number of private shareholders. The station went to air as Invicta Sound at 6am on 1st October 1984. The first presenter was Magnus Carter, with Daybreak. The first few seconds of broadcasting were marred by a sound mix up which meant that Magnus' discussions with his production team were broadcast to the county.
The station output was described as "Radio 2 cum Radio 4", featuring a mix of middle-of-the-road music coupled with a prominent news schedule where a news bulletin would last at least 9 minutes.[1]
The station's heavy news output - possibly an attempt at stealing listeners from rival BBC Radio Kent was recognised by station staff as unsuccessful, losing a lot of listeners. After this disappointing start the Managing Director of the company Cecilia Garnett was sacked after the first few months, replaced by Michael Bukht (also known as the Chef Michael Barry).
The station was relaunched as Invicta Radio in spring 1985 with a new younger, more popular music based approach.
The company's studios were based in an old warehouse and later nightclub, The Works, at 15 Station Road East in Canterbury, with a second, smaller base at 37 Earl Street in Maidstone. Originally, presenters generally had the option of choosing where to present their show from, depending on where they lived. Plus, in the Invicta Sound days, there was some separate programming for East and West Kent, including dedicated Drivetime shows for each half of the county. Interestingly, some specialist shows could only be heard by one half of the county, including a classical music show and a programme aimed at children, called "Kid's Stuff".
In 1985, a general reorganisation of radio frequencies in Britain forced Invicta into changing a number of its broadcast numbers:
The lack of a single high-powered frequency for the east of the county was because of international frequency clearance problems due to the proximity to France across the English Channel. Instead three low-powered transmitters were installed in Ashford, Folkestone/Dover and Thanet. This problem did not affect BBC national and local radio, which use a single high-powered site at Swingate, near Dover.[2]
A few years after the rebranding of the station to Invicta Radio, the station became known as Invicta FM. Soon after, separate breakfast shows started to be broadcast to the following areas:
As required by the Home Office to end simulcasting on FM and AM, in March 1989, Invicta Radio became Invicta FM and a sister station, Coast AM began broadcasting on Invicta's AM frequencies. Whilst the company name remained Invicta Sound plc, the expanding operation started to become known as the Invicta Radio Group.
Coast AM was an AOR/soft rock station under the leadership of ex-Capital Producer/DJ Kerry Juby with music programmed by Paul Stafford (Head of Music and "Living on Rock" presenter, 7-11pm weekdays), who left the station abruptly in early 1990. Eammon Kelly was the station's first breakfast host. A few months after the launch, Coast AM was renamed "Coast Classics". (Although the jingles sang "Coast Classic"). The service began playing more 'oldies' and by 1990 it became a fully fledged 'Golden Oldies' station. Throughout this period, Coast was a 24-hour live local station, but in 1991 it started taking a "sustaining service" from Chiltern Radio Group's expanding AM 'Gold' service, SuperGold. As a result of this change, the station was renamed Invicta Supergold. This helped as research had shown that listeners never fully got used to the station's name, many still calling it Invicta! A near-identical set of jingles from JAM were re-sung with the station's new name, and there were no major schedule changes. However, just before this change took place, and for most of Summer 1991, presenters at the station were instructed to call the station "Coast Classics Invicta Supergold" on air, to enable listeners to get used to the change. It became a highly popular station and once achieved a 17% reach in a JICRAR survey; some say much to the disgust of its Southern Radio bosses who, it has been said, preferred their AM stations to hover around the 9% mark! It too lost its identity in 1998 when it become Capital Gold. As Invicta Supergold, the station performed very well and became home to ex Invicta FM presenters such as ex-breakfast presenter Johnny Lewis.
In 1991, controversy was sparked as one of the famous DJs, Chris Ryder (aka Caesar the Boogieman), was terminated from his job over criminal charges related to theft from charity. He was ultimately found not guilty on these charges, but was convicted of intent to defraud .
Also in 1991, the Maidstone studios and offices closed and a few months later, the entire company moved to a brand new, larger, building just outside Whitstable. This was due to the company getting too big for its Canterbury home having started to expand its radio operations beyond Kent. By now it had acquired a radio station in Frinton, Essex called Mellow 1557 (now known as Dream 100'), as well as a stake in a radio station in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, which it had relaunched as Continental Invicta FM. (Some of Invicta FM's jingles were resung as "Continental FM" and voice overs appeared on the station by Invicta presenter Tim Stewart).
Shortly after moving to its current base, the station was acquired by Southern Radio plc which, in turn, was acquired by Capital Radio plc in May 1994. (Mellow 1557 was sold by Southern Radio plc a few months after it took control of the Invicta Radio Group.)
New rival commercial stations in the late nineties were awarded licences in Kent by the Radio Authority. These were TLR (Thanet), Medway FM (Medway Towns), Neptune Radio (Shepway and Dover), CTFM (Canterbury and district) and KFM (Tonbridge and Sevenoaks). These new stations mainly adopted a much larger playlist of songs and, despite no major audiences successes, they gradually put extra pressure on Invicta's advertising revenue. Most of the stations also employed many familiar ex-Invicta presenters. These stations are all now known as KMFM following buyouts by the KM Group.
See also Capital Gold
When Chiltern closed its SuperGold sustaining service, Invicta FM and Invicta Supergold began sharing a single programme overnight. It retained its own separate identity by the use of split FM/AM jingles and an hourly out-of-news separate pre-recorded weather forecast, read over the respective station's weather jingle. However, the presenter simply called it "Invicta" elsewhere in the hour. This usually ran from midnight or 1am till 6am, although the later launch of an "early breakfast" programme on Invicta FM meant the overnight presenter would do the last hour on Supergold only.
Invicta Supergold closed down May 1998, to be replaced by the mainly networked Capital Gold. The change happened with no promotion, save for a handful of promos scheduled to run over the weekend prior to the Monday launch. A local Drivetime show was retained, presented initially by Mike Peters, then Peter Fielding. This was ahead of the roll out of Capital Gold across other AM stations owned by the company; the Kent site acted as a test station, chosen in part because of its close proximity to Capital Gold in London, to ensure syndication worked, and to iron out any problems. Another change that occurred at the launch of Capital Gold in Kent is that for the first time, advertising was no longer split with different ads in the east and west of the county, as had been the case since 1984 - all ads now broadcast on the station are heard on both of the station's frequencies.
By September, Capital Gold could also be heard in Birmingham, Sussex, Hampshire and, not long after, South Wales. A while later, the decision was taken to network the Drivetime show (presented by Tony Blackburn and instead local breakfast shows would be broadcast on each of the local Capital Gold services. Kent's local opt-out show was then presented by Tim Stewart, who moved over from Invicta FM.
Ex-Radio 1 DJ Adrian John took over the Kent breakfast show in 2000.
A local breakfast show survived until August 2007, when Capital Gold owners GCap Media purchased the Classic Gold stations from UBC. Ofcom agreed a proposal to move the four hour local opt-out from breakfast to afternoons. Kent's breakfast show host by now was Neil Winfield who left the station and ex-Invicta jock Russ Lowe came in to present the 12-4 slot on weekdays. It was, and remains, pre-recorded ('voicetracked') and 'music heavy'. As it is recorded especially for the Kent audience of the now-renamed Gold; station, it is able to include occasional Kent information and other references to the county. Local news and travel remains in the Breakfast and Drivetime programmes, and local commercials are broadcast 24 hours a day. All other output is produced at the Gold studios at Leicester Square in London.
Capital Radio plc and GWR Group plc merged in 2005 and on May 1 of that year, the newly enlarged group was renamed GCap Media plc. The first effects of the GCap merger were felt by Invicta FM soon afterwards. New boss Craig Boddy, assisted by GCap management (Hugh Murray and Regional Programme boss Peter Sinclair), undertook a radical restructure of the station in September 2005, in response to falling listening figures and mounting overheads. Boddy changed Invicta from the style influenced by nearby Capital FM, to one which roughly resembled the old Mix Network. Invicta was possibly the last local radio station owned by the company (outside London) to be live and local 24/7*, escaping overnight networking and voicetracking at times when Capital Radio-owned stablemates like Ocean, Southern and Power succumbed to one or the other.
(*Excluding the short-lived Steve Penk late night show heard across the Capital FM network, a Sunday afternoon show presented by Cat Deeley and Edith Bowman, and the weekly chart show, currently known as 'The Big Top 40 Show')
The new relaunched Invicta carried the first of the GWR straplines 'The best mix of the 80s, 90s and today' from Monday September 19, 2005. The second strapline 'Today's Best Mix', was introduced on Bank Holiday Monday, 28 August 2006.
In May 2008, both Craig Boddy and Regional Programme Director Peter Sinclair left and in July 2008 former Invicta FM and KMFM Programme Controller Mike Osborne was appointed to the newly created role of Programme Director
On June 30 2008, following the relaxtation of OFCOM regulations on networking, the new owners of GCap Media, Global Radio, cut minimum local programming to ten hours on weekdays (from 6-10am and 1-7pm) and four hours on Saturdays & Sundays (from 8am-12pm). The changes signalled the end of some long-running programmes including Party Invicta and an increase in networked output, including the mid-morning show with Philippa Collins (aired from 10am-1pm). Andy Walker presented the local 1pm - 4pm show until December 2008 when he was replaced by ex night time presenter Stephen Sullivan with Neil Kefford hosting the 4 pm-7 pm. In common with most of its sister stations, a lot of modern music and rocky/edgey music had by now been dropped by Invicta, in favour of a slightly and bigger concentration of older music, as far back to the late 70s in a few cases and up to three 80s songs an hour; sounding a bit like a younger version of another Global Radio station, Heart. All stations affected now shared the same playlist (e.g. Invicta FM played the same songs in the same order as sister station Essex FM). The strapline also mirrored Heart's - More Music Variety - as did the name of the now renamed 'guess the year' feature, The Time Tunnel.
In September 2008 it was reported that Invicta, along with 28 other local radio stations, would be renamed as "Heart" [3] and that most of the local programmes would be lost, with just a local Breakfast and Drivetime show surviving on weekdays. These two shows are broadcast from studios on an industrial estate just outside Whitstable,whilst everything else comes from London's Leicester Square. Whilst the station was still known on air as Invicta FM, airtime on the station was (and still is) sold nationally as part of the Heart Network.
The station was amongst the final phase of stations to be rebranded, becoming Heart on June 22, 2009. Two months before the rebrand, the station was referred to as "The Heart of Kent". Two weeks before the rebrand, all references to the Invicta FM name were removed, and trailers advertising "Heart is coming" were played after every song. This changed to "Heart is here" following the rebrand.
Heart network programming is overseen by Group Programme Director of the Heart Network, Luis Clark, who was Programme Director of Invicta FM between 1999 and 2000.
For some time the station ran four breakfast shows from Whitstable - Invicta Supergold, Invicta FM (102.8 and 103.1 and in Dover on 97.0) Invicta FM Ashford (96.1) and Invicta FM Thanet (95.9). The different programmes all took the same news and sports bulletins but had different presenters. This made it difficult for Invicta FM to promote its breakfast programme, as there were three different presenters broadcasting to different parts of Kent.
The split FM breakfast was discontinued with the launch of The Invicta FM Morning Zoo in 1995 - with Neil Francis, Simon Beale, Kirsty Long on travel and Stuart Thomas newsreading. The Morning Zoo was the brainchild of then Programme Controller Sandy Beech.
For a time, commercials continued to be split four ways on Invicta FM, with East, West, Thanet and Ashford as the different broadcast regions.
The Morning Zoo was a fixture of the Invicta FM schedule for many years. Neil Francis was the initial lead presenter of the show until 2000 - he was later partnered with Sam Hughes (known on air simply as 'Sam').
From 2000, James Heming was the lead presenter of the Morning Zoo following the departure of Neil Francis. The last Morning Zoo was broadcast on Friday 22 December 2006. The breakfast show was rebranded "James and Ali in the morning" at the beginning of 2007, to reflect the move away from the 'zoo' style of a handful of people interacting with each other at once.
From May 2008, it was known as "James Heming in the morning", following Ali Wheeler's departure from the station on Friday 2 May 2008 to have her first child. From November 2008 to December 2010, James had a new co host - Gemma Shepherd - and the show became known as "Invicta FM Breakfast with James and Gemma" and subsequently as "Heart Breakfast with James and Gemma". In January 2011, it was known as "Heart Breakfast with James Heming". James gained Charlie O'Brien as his new co host on 21 January, and their new show started on the 24 January 2011. Recent figures show that 'Heart Breakfast with James and Charlie' has become the most popular breakfast show in Kent, this coming January will mark 1 year from the arrival of co-host Charlie
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The station broadcasts two locally produced shows during the day, with the remainder originating from studios elsewhere in the UK that are operated by parent company Global Radio.
| Time | Main presenter(s)/programme | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 0100 – 0400 | All 80s, All Night (automated) | Leicester Square, London |
| 0400 - 0600 | Nicola Bonn | |
| 0600 – 1000 | James Hemming & Charlie O'Brien: Heart Breakfast | Whitstable |
| 1000 – 1300 | Toby Anstis | Leicester Square, London |
| 1300 – 1600 | Nick Snaith | |
| 1600 – 1900 | Neil Kefford: Heart Drivetime (Local) | Whitstable |
| 1900 – 2200 | Simon Dale | Leicester Square, London |
| 2200 – 0100 | Simon Beale |
| Time | Main presenter(s) | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 1900 - 0000 | Club Classics with Simon Dale | Leicester Square, London |
| Time | Main presenter(s)/programme | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 0000 - 0200 | Club Classics (automated) | Leicester Square, London |
| 0200 – 0600 | Vanessa Elms | |
| 0600 - 0800 | Matt Wilkinson | |
| 0800 – 1200 | Claire Lawson: Heart Breakfast (Local) | Whitstable |
| 1200 – 1600 | Nick Snaith | Leicester Square, London |
| 1600 – 1900 | Emma Bunton | |
| 1900 – 0000 | Club Classics with Steve Denyer |
| Time | Main presenter(s)/programme | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 0000 - 0200 | Club Classics (automated) | Leicester Square, London |
| 0200 – 0600 | Vanessa Elms | |
| 0600 - 0800 | Matt Wilkinson | |
| 0800 – 1200 | Claire Lawson: Heart Breakfast (Local) | Whitstable |
| 1200 – 1600 | Jason Donovan | Leicester Square, London |
| 1600 – 1900 | Rich Clarke & Kat Shoob: The Vodafone Freebees Big Top 40 | |
| 1900 – 2200 | Chris Skinner | |
| 2200 - 0100 | Simon Beale |
Heart Kent broadcasts local news updates on weekdays every 30 minutes between 6am and 9am, and then hourly from 9am to 6pm. At the weekend, local news is broadcast hourly between 8am and 11am. National news updates are broadcast at 7pm weekdays and at 6am, 7am, 12noon, 1pm and 2pm at the weekend.
Broadcast Journalist
Anna Jones
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