Heart Four Counties

Heart Four Counties
City Dunstable
Broadcast area Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Northamptonshire
Branding This is Heart
Slogan Turn up the Feel Good!
Frequency 96.6, 96.9, 97.6, 103.3 MHz & DAB
RDS: Heart___
Format Adult Contemporary
Owner Global Group
Website Heart Four Counties

Heart Four Counties is a local radio station owned and operated by Global Radio as part of the Heart network. It broadcasts to Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Northamptonshire. The station launched on Friday 16 July 2010 as a result of a merger between Heart Milton Keynes (formerly Horizon Radio), Heart Northants (formerly Northants 96), Heart Dunstable (formerly 97.6 Chiltern FM) and Heart Bedford (formerly 96.9 Chiltern Radio).

History

The regional station originally broadcast as four separate stations - Chiltern Radio began broadcasting to Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in October 1981 and launched a separate Bedford station in June 1982. Northants 96 began broadcasting to Northamptonshire in November 1986 and Horizon Radio launched in north Buckinghamshire in October 1989.

These stations were owned and operated by the Chiltern Radio Group, which was sold off to the GWR Group in 1995. Subsequently, the GWR Group merged with Capital Radio in 2005 to form GCap Media, which was subsequently bought out by Global Radio in 2008.

On 21 June 2010, Global Radio announced it would merge the four stations as part of plans to reduce the Heart network of stations from 33 separate stations to 16 co-located 'broadcast centres'.[1] The new station began broadcasting from Dunstable on Friday 16 July 2010 and moved to new studios in Milton Keynes on 6 September 2011.[2]

Programming

Local programming is produced and broadcast from Heart's Milton Keynes studios from 6-10am and 4-7pm on weekdays, 1-5pm on Saturdays and 12pm-4pm on Sundays. All networked programming originates from Global Radio's London headquarters, including the syndicated Vodafone Big Top 40 on Sunday afternoons.

The station's local presenters include Stuart Miles and Katy Hill (Heart Breakfast) and Gareth Wesley (weekday drivetime).

News

Heart Four Counties broadcasts hourly regional news bulletins from 6am-7pm on weekdays and 6am-12pm at weekends. The Milton Keynes newsroom also produces bulletins for the independently-owned Heart Hertfordshire.[3]

National news updates air hourly from Global's London headquarters at all other times.

References

  1. ↑ Global Radio to halve number of local Heart stations, mediaguardian.co.uk, 21 June 2010 Archived 1 January 2011 at WebCite
  2. ↑ , RadioToday, 6 September 2011Archived 1 January 2011 at WebCite
  3. ↑ Heart Dunstable public file

Coordinates: 51°53′25″N 0°31′47″W / 51.8903°N 0.5298°W / 51.8903; -0.5298

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