Heart (radio network)

Launch

Heart began broadcasting in the West Midlands on 6 September 1994 as 100.7 Heart FM, becoming the UK's third Independent Regional Radio station, five days after Century Radio in North East England, and Jazz FM North West.

The first song to be played on 100.7 Heart FM was Something Got Me Started by Simply Red. Its original format of "soft adult contemporary" music included artists such as Lionel Richie and Tina Turner. Reflecting this, its early slogan was 100.7 Degrees Cooler!

Heart 106.2 began test transmissions in London in August 1995, prior to the station launch on 5 September. This included live broadcasts of WPLJ from New York City.^[2]

In 1996 the station's original "soft AC" music format was replaced with a generally more neutral Hot AC playlist. Century 106 in the East Midlands became the third station of the Heart network in 2005 after GCap Media sold Century. Chrysalis' radio holdings were sold to Global Radio in 2007.

When GCap Media was taken over by Global Radio in 2008, it announced plans to dissolve the 41-station One Network, with one station (Power FM) becoming part of the Galaxy network, four stations (BRMB, Beacon Radio, Mercia FM and Wyvern FM) forming a West Midlands regional network, seven stations joining Capital FM to form The Hit Music Network and the remaining 29 stations forming the Heart Network.

Heart East Midlands was sold to Orion Media, along with the West Midlands network of local stations, due to the same competition concerns that had forced its earlier sale to Chrysalis.

Network restructuring

Between June and September 2010, Global Radio merged the majority of the 33 Heart stations to create a smaller network of 18 local and regional stations, in line with new OFCOM guidelines on local output requirements.^[3][4] Two Hit Music Network stations were also closed and merged with Heart stations.

Stations in Gloucestershire, Kent, London, the West Midlands, the East Midlands and Wiltshire were unaffected by the changes. Heart Cymru, serving Gwynedd and Anglesey, moved its studios from Bangor to Wrexham but retained its extended local output of 10 hours on weekdays and 8 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Heart North West and Wales retained an opt-out on 96.3FM (the North Wales Coast) for Welsh language programming.

On 1 January 2011, Orion Media, the owners of Heart East Midlands (one of the original three Heart stations) renamed and relaunched the station as 'Gem 106', ending a franchise agreement with Global Radio formed when Global purchased GCap – the agreement allowed Orion to use the Heart identity and carry networked programming from London.^[5] The move saw Heart's networked programming replaced by local output from Nottingham.

Network expansion

On 19 March 2012, Global Radio announced it had bought the Cornwall ILR station Atlantic FM from joint owners Tindle Radio and Camel Media.^[6] Atlantic FM became part of the Heart Network and merged with Heart Devon on Monday 7 May 2012 to form Heart South West, which is based in Exeter.^[7]

On 6 February 2014, Global Radio announced it would be rebranding all Real Radio stations as Heart and would be selling Real Radio Yorkshire and the Northern licence for Real Radio Wales to Communicorp. The Communicorp-owned stations use Heart's network programming and branding under a franchise agreement with Global.^[8]

Global Radio extended the Heart network to the Real Radio network of regional stations from Tuesday 6 May 2014.^[9] The two stations based in Wrexham – Heart North West and Wales and Heart Cymru – became part of the Capital FM Network on the same date.

On 20 November 2017, CN Group announced The Bay would be sold to Global along with sister station Lakeland Radio – the sale was finalised by 1 December 2017.^[10] The Bay was rebranded as Heart, with Lakeland Radio becoming Smooth on 4 March 2018.^[11]

Music from the 1960s, 1970s & 1980s was removed from the original FM station after Christmas 2017.^{[citation needed]}

Consolidation

In February 2019, following OFCOM's decision to relax local content obligations from commercial radio, it was announced Heart would replace its local breakfast and weekend shows with additional networked programming from London by the end of the year. This reduced total weekly hours of local programming on each station from 43 to 15 and led to dozens of job losses.^[12]

Drivetime output were reduced from 23 localised shows to 10 programmes covering enlarged areas, formed from the merger of Heart stations. Ten studios producing local programming were closed.^[12] Localised news, traffic updates and advertising was retained across all licence areas.^[13]

In April 2019, it was reported the local Heart Breakfast shows would be replaced by a national Heart Breakfast show from London on 3 June 2019, presented by Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden.^[14] The merging stations ceased local output on 31 May 2019.

In Hertfordshire, a further change saw Heart Hertfordshire, based in Watford, merged with BOB fm – following its acquisition by Communicorp – to form a single countywide service.

Stations in the North East of England, Wales, central and southern Scotland, the West Midlands and Yorkshire continue to serve their single licence areas as before.

In April 2023, it was announced Heart Scotland would reintroduce local breakfast, daytime and weekend programming from 2 May 2023, as part of a major expansion of Global's Scottish radio operations.^[15][16]

Regional

As of May 2019, Heart's regional network consists of twelve stations:^[17]

National

As of 12 September 2024, Heart's national spin-offs consist of ten stations, broadcast from Global's London headquarters:

Networked presenters

Source:^[20]

Regional presenters

Former presenters

News

All Heart stations broadcast local news bulletins each day – updates air hourly from 5am to 7pm on weekdays and from 6am to 12pm at weekends, similar to how Capital broadcasts news updates.

In accordance with OFCOM speech requirements, some Heart stations produce separate localised bulletins. For example, Heart West produces bulletins for Bristol and Somerset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Devon and Cornwall.

Network presentation

As of 2014, the network uses jingles and themes produced by ReelWorld Europe, based in Salford.^[36]

Previously, Heart used a jingle package, composed by the Seattle-based music production company IQ Beats.^[37]