Oak FM

For the original Loughborough radio station operated by the CN Group from 1999-2008, see Oak 107 FM.

For the original radio station broadcast on Oak FM's Hinckley transmitter from 1998-2008, see Fosseway Radio.

Oak FM is a local radio station broadcasting across West Leicestershire as well as the town of Nuneaton in the English Midlands in the United Kingdom. It is owned and operated by Quidem.

History

Launching on Wednesday 26 March 2008, the station was born out of the merger of two existing stations which originally launched in the late 1990s: existing Lincs FM Group station Fosseway Radio in Hinckley and the acquisition of Oak 107 FM in Loughborough from the CN Group in October 2007.

Fosseway Radio

Fosseway Radio was the original holder of the Hinckley license, awarded to the Lincs FM Group by the Radio Authority in early 1998. It launched on the air on 1 November that year. The station achieved reasonable audience figures for the area it served.

Oak 107 FM

Oak FM, as it was originally known, launched on 14 February 1999. The station went through a number of rebrands and was eventually acquired by the CN Group in the early millennium. In 2003 the station supported the "Give The Luffs a Lease" campaign in favour of Loughborough Football Club's attempt to secure a long term lease for the site of its stadium. The Radio Authority ruled that this "was acceptable because the station was satisfied that the vast majority of its listeners would support it and the issue was not made into a political controversy." This license became Lincs FM's first-ever acquisition, in the Autumn of 2007.

Schedule

As revealed in a memorandum to Ofcom, both stations had never turned a profit in their first decade or so on-air. To allow the station to become profitable, both studios were moved to a brand new site near Coalville generally equidistant between the two towns. This set the precedent for a long-term direction at the group to reduce the number of studio sites they operated, with a number of their stations later following suit.

Following a temporary co-location at the Hinckley studios, the new studios opened in the Summer of 2008. There were originally separate breakfast shows, along with localised specialist programmes on Sunday evening. Outside of this time, the two services were identical but retained split advertising, allowing clients the opportunity to buy one, the other, or both transmitters if they wished. The breakfast shows merged in 2010.

The station continued to struggle post-merger, resulting in an increase in pre-recorded programming and a number of redundancies. The weekend specialist shows became pre-recorded in late 2011. However, these cuts did not produce sufficient savings and the station was purchased by Quidem in 2012, becoming the Lincs FM Group's first-ever disposal. On 9th December 2013, former Trent FM and Capital FM presenter Angy 'Twiggy' Twigge joined Mark Rowley to co-present Oak FM's breakfast show, "Mark & Twiggy in the Morning".

External links

• Official website
• Barwell transmitter
• Loughborough University transmitter