The Breeze Basingstoke & North Hampshire was an independent local radio station serving

Basingstoke Basingstoke ( ) is the largest town in the county of Hampshire. It is situated in south-central England and lies across a valley at the source of the River Loddon, at the far western edge of The North Downs. It is located north-east of Southa ...

and the surrounding area of North

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English citi ...

. Owned and operated by

Bauer Bauer is a German surname meaning "peasant" or "farmer". For notable people sharing the surname, see Bauer (surname). Bauer may also refer to: Education and literature * Bauer's Lexicon, a dictionary of Biblical Greek * Bauer College of Busin ...

as part of the Greatest Hits Radio Network.

History

Kestrel FM

The Basingstoke station launched on 18 May 1998, and is now owned by

Celador CPL Productions (formerly Celador) is a British entertainment company originally formed in the United Kingdom in 1981 as an independent television production company. It created and produced a number of popular light entertainment shows and is ...

. The previous owners Milestone launched a free weekly local

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...

, the Basingstoke Observer, in association with Kestrel FM in 2000. In 2010, 107.6 Kestrel FM in Basingstoke was merged with

Delta FM Delta FM was a United Kingdom local radio station, broadcasting to East Hampshire, South West Surrey and North West Sussex. The station provided local news, community information, and specialist music programming to the towns of Alton, Hampshire ...

in Alton, Bordon, Haslemere and Petersfield. However, initially the old Delta FM frequencies had a separate Breakfast Show, hosted by Dave Trumper. Outside of weekday Breakfast the former Delta Radio frequencies shared with Kestrel FM 107.6. By 2011, even this practice seemed to have been discontinued, with all areas receiving programming from Basingstoke.

Celador takeover

Up until 2012, Kestrel FM was run by the Tindle Radio Group. The station was latterly taken over by Celador and on 16 December 2012, rebranded as The Breeze. The station continues to broadcast programming from its Basingstoke studios, from where regional programming for the Thames Valley and local news bulletins originate. The East Hampshire frequencies were moved to the Southampton-based Breeze station and 107.6 to the Thames Valley station.

Closure

The Breeze was purchased by Bauer Media in 2019 along with many other radio stations. On 27 May 2020 it was announced that The Breeze will become Greatest Hits Radio from early September 2020. The station went through a transitional period where it's playlist was changed over to the 70s, 80s and 90s era and jingles changed to reflect the station playing "greatest hits". The Breeze was finally rebranded to

Greatest Hits Radio South Greatest Hits Radio South is a regional radio station serving the South of England, as part of Bauer’s Greatest Hits Radio network. Coverage The six local stations broadcast to Salisbury, Dorset, West Sussex, North Hampshire, Berkshire and A ...

at 6:00am on 1 September 2020.

References

External links