Heart West Country was a regional

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...

owned and operated by Global Radio as part of the

Heart The heart is a muscular organ in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as carbon dioxide to t ...

network, broadcasting to

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

and

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

. It launched on 16 July 2010 as a result of a merger between

Heart Bristol Heart 96.3 (formerly GWR FM Bristol) is a radio station serving Bristol and surrounding areas and broadcasting on 96.3 MHz in Bristol and Weston-super-Mare. Launched in 1981 as Radio West, it was merged with neighbouring Wiltshire Radio a ...

(formerly GWR FM), Heart Bath (formerly GWR FM Bath) and Heart Somerset (formerly Orchard FM).

History

The regional station originally broadcast as three separate stations – GWR FM began broadcasting to Bristol in October 1985, following a merger between Radio West and Swindon's Wiltshire Radio. Two years later, GWR launched a separate service for the Bath area (although some local programming was simulcast with GWR Bristol). Meanwhile, Orchard FM began broadcasting to Somerset in November 1989 – the station was bought out by GWR Group as part of its acquisition of the Orchard Media Group ten years later. In 2005, the GWR Group merged with

Capital Radio Capital London is a radio station owned and operated by the Global media company as part of its national Capital FM Network. As Capital Radio it was launched in the London area in 1973 as one of Britain's first two commercial radio stations. ...

to form GCap Media – shortly afterwards, Orchard FM and ten other stations (outside of the company's primary target area) were put on sale. The sale was called off a few months later because of lower than expected bids. In November 2008, GCap was taken over by Global Radio. GWR in Bristol & Bath and Orchard FM were rebranded as Heart on 23 March 2009. On 21 June 2010, Global Radio announced it would merge the three stations as part of plans to reduce the Heart network of stations from 33 to 16. The new station began broadcasting from the 'West Country Broadcast Centre' in Bristol on Friday 16 July 2010, leading to the closure of studios in Taunton.

Station merger

On 26 February 2019, Global announced Heart West Country would be merged with three sister stations in Devon and Cornwall,

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

and

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

. From 3 June 2019, local output will consist of a three-hour regional Drivetime show on weekdays, alongside localised news bulletins, traffic updates and advertising. Local breakfast and weekend shows were with network programming from London. Heart West began broadcasting regional programming from the Bristol studios on 3 June 2019.Amanda Holden to join Jamie Theakston for Heart UK Breakfast
Radio Today, 29 April 2019

References

External links

Heart West Country
{{coord, 51.45395, -2.58586, display=title, region:GB_scale:5000

West Country The West Country (occasionally Westcountry) is a loosely defined area of South West England, usually taken to include all, some, or parts of the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Bristol, and, less commonly, Wiltshire, Glo ...

Radio stations in Wiltshire Radio stations in Bristol Radio stations in Somerset Mass media in Bath, Somerset Radio stations established in 2010 Defunct radio stations in the United Kingdom