Fresh Radio

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Fresh Radio
Broadcast area Yorkshire Dales
(Western North Yorkshire, Northern West Yorkshire, Southeastern Cumbria & Northern Lancashire)
Frequency 936MW
(Hawes)
102.6FM (Richmond)
107.1FM (Ilkley)
107.1FM (Pateley Bridge)
107.8FM
RDS Name "FRESH"
Format Hot AC
Owner Utopia Broadcasting Limited
Website http://www.freshradio.co.uk/

Fresh Radio was a local radio station broadcasting to the Yorkshire Dales in northern England on two medium wave (AM) frequencies and three FM frequencies. It was also heard online via the Fresh Radio website.

Transmission

Two of the three AM frequencies were originally to be switched off by April 2007 and replaced by FM transmitters in Skipton, Ilkley, Pateley Bridge, Settle, Richmond and Grassington. The FM transmitter for Richmond on 102.6FM commenced broadcasts on 11 February 2007 on 102.6FM, however the rollout elsewhere was delayed, and AM kept being broadcast in Richmond, alongside the FM frequency.

The Ilkley transmitter also began broadcasting on 107.1FM as of 18 February 2007, a frequency also used by the former AM Pateley Bridge transmitter, while AM broadcasting continued on 936AM covering Wensleydale, 1413AM from Skipton and 1431AM from Settle.

The station's main studio was based at Broughton Hall near Skipton. Fresh Radio broadcast to an area of approximately 2,000 square miles (5,200 km2) to an adult population of around 200,000 people.

Its coverage area was, broadly, bounded by the M6 motorway to the West, the A1 to the East, the A66 to the North and the towns of Skipton, Keighley and Ilkley to the South.

Digital Radio

In September 2007 it was announced that the station will launch on DAB across North Yorkshire. The same month MuxCo applied for a local DAB Digital Radio licence to cover the North Yorkshire area, and was awarded the licence in December 2007.[1] It aimed initially to commence broadcasting in mid-2009.

Content

The station featured a variety of music, with contemporary recording artists from the 1960s to the present day, local and national news, weather, travel, quizzes and local information.

History

Fresh Radio was launched 4 May 1997 as Yorkshire Dales Radio with the strapline "May the fourth be with you". The station was re-launched in 1999 as Fresh AM, with a slight change of name two years later to Fresh Radio pending the introduction of FM frequencies.

The station was originally owned by a group of local shareholders, it was then acquired by Laser Broadcasting, and then Utopia Broadcasting Ltd.

Fresh Radio's coverage of local news was mentioned in opinion presented by Boris Johnson to the 2004 House of Commons Second Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation, following the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak. Johnson stated: "I believe that it [Fresh Radio] was an important focal point during the foot and mouth outbreak... It would be hard to think of a more perfect definition of a community radio".[2]

The station was sold to UKRD on Friday 6 January 2012 and went into automated programming. The last presenter heard on air was Nick Babb. It ceased transmission at 6pm on the same day.[3]

Plans were unveiled to merge the station into Stray FM, covering an enlarged coverage area from existing studios in Harrogate but Stray FM subsequently dropped transmission to the northern Dales, leaving the area previously covered by the 936 kHz AM transmitter at Hawes with no independent local commercial radio. However, a new community station, Dales Radio, was licenced in November 2013 and is expected to cover the area which lost out when UKRD decided to cease broadcasting the enlarged Stray FM in the northern Dales area.[4][5]

Former staff

  • Station Manager/Head of Programming, Music and Sales was Julian Hotchkiss.
  • Head of News and Current Affairs was James Wilson.

Former presenters of Yorkshire Dales Radio and Fresh AM/Radio

  • Matt Cain
  • Julian Hotchkiss
  • James Wilson
  • Steve Joy
  • Jeremy Gartland
  • Liam Scott
  • Nick Babb
  • Sophie Metcalfe
  • Barry Mitchell
  • Graham Bower
  • Ron Nicholson
  • Becky Hall
  • Beverley Alexander
  • David Sibbald
  • Richard Lee
  • Ian Petit
  • Ian Wighton
  • Simon Parrock
  • Stevie Gow
  • Andy Moore
  • Mike Hammond
  • Sam Bottomley
  • Mike Long
  • Catherine Nelson-Pollard
  • Allan Hollings
  • Tim Paul
  • Stuart Clarkson
  • Les Gunn
  • Mark Reason
  • Trent Watson
  • Nick Bewes
  • Tony Collins
  • Glenn Pinder
  • Steve Warren
  • Brett Butler
  • Dave Parker
  • Adam Russell
  • Clive Silverthorne
  • Chris Marsden
  • Laurence Budd
  • Jonathan Darwin
  • Sarah Lister
  • Dave Metcalfe
  • Nic Foster
  • Nick Jordan
  • Julia Davidson
  • Steve Todd
  • Mike Nicholson
  • Chris Kaye
  • Elisa Penchanski
  • Tim Finlay
  • Tim West

Awards

Fresh Radio was named "Yorkshire and The North East Radio Station Of The Year" in 2004, and again in 2006, by the Radio Academy.

References

  1. ↑ Muxco, North Yorkshire, Muxco.com. Retrieved 24 December 2011
  2. ↑ "Draft Community Radio Order 2004", Second Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation (2004). Retrieved 24 December 2011
  3. ↑
  4. ↑ Ofcom website - Community radio license awards October 2013
  5. ↑ Radio Today website

External links

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