Heart 106

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Heart 106, later Heart East Midlands was a regional independent radio station based in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire in England.

History

Based in Nottingham on the City link in the Sneinton area of the city centre, the station was launched on 23 September 1997 as Radio 106. In April 1998, station owners, Border Radio Holdings felt a change was needed, so in April 1998, John Myers took control over the station and it was rebranded as Century 106. In May 2000, Century 106, along with the other Century stations in the North East and North West, were sold to Capital Radio, who then merged with GWR Group in 2004 forming GCap Media. GCap were required to sell the East Midlands station (as the combined firm also owned a number of other stations in the region), and thus Century 106 was sold to Chrysalis, owners of Heart in London and the West Midlands (GCap retained the other Century stations for a time, later selling them to Guardian Media Group; these stations now broadcast as Real Radio).

Chrysalis bought Century 106 for £29.5m and said it planned to rebrand the station as Heart 106, to go with 100.7 Heart FM in the West Midlands as the area matched that of ITV Central and that would make it attractive to advertisers.[1][2][3]

The station was relaunched as Heart 106 on 29 August 2005. A further, more subtle rebrand was applied in September 2006 which saw the dropping of the frequencies from station names across the Heart Network. This is to reflect the move into the digital age and as a result, the station was now referred to on-air simply as Heart.

On the 25 June 2007 it was announced that Heart along with its sister stations The Arrow, LBC and Galaxy were to be sold for £170 million to Global Radio from the Chrysalis Group.[4]

Following Global Radio's takeover of GCap Media, the Office of Fair Trading ordered Global to sell five of its Midlands stations including BRMB, Mercia FM, Wyvern FM, Heart 106 and Beacon Radio. In May 2009, the stations were sold to Orion Media, a company backed by Lloyds TSB Development Capital and Phil Riley.

On 9 November 2010, Orion Media announced that Heart 106 would be relaunched and renamed as Gem 106 from 1 January 2011.[5] Under the rebrand, the station ended its franchise agreement with Global Radio which allowed it to use the Heart identity and carry networked programming from London.[6]

References

  1. ↑ "Ofcom file: Details of Chrysalis". Retrieved 2010-05-17. 
  2. ↑ "Ofcom file: Details of Chrysalis". Retrieved 2010-05-17. 
  3. ↑ "Simon's Midlands FM Radio Stations". Retrieved 2010-05-18. 
  4. ↑ Chrysalis sells three radio stations
  5. ↑ Gem to replace Heart East Mids
  6. ↑ Heart 106 to become a local Gem, Nottingham Evening Post, 9 November 2010

External links

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