Banbury Sound was an Independent Local Radio station serving the Banbury and Brackley areas of north

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily ...

. At the time of closure, it was owned and operated by Quidem and broadcast from studios at Honiley, Warwickshire.

History

Banbury Sound was launched as ''Touch FM'' on Saturday 25 February 2006 by then-breakfast presenter Dale Collins, with the first news bulletin read by then-group editor Daniel Bruce. It was previously owned by the Cumbria-based CN Group and was their third station to adopt the Touch FM branding, alongside sister stations in Coventry and

Stratford-upon-Avon Stratford-upon-Avon (), commonly known as just Stratford, is a market town and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon district, in the county of Warwickshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It is situated on the River Avon, north-we ...

. Programming was networked between the three stations outside of breakfast and drivetime. The station changed owners on 1 April 2009, making it part of ''Banbury Broadcasting Company Limited'' - with staff members John Crutch (Station Director), Anneka Naysmith (Sales Director) and Dale Collins (Director of Programming) as partners in the buyout. Two months later, the station relaunched as ''Banbury Sound'' and introduced a full schedule of local output from its studios in the Grimsbury area of Banbury After the station was sold again to Touch FM's new owners, Quidem, in October 2010, the station co-located to studios at Honiley in Warwickshire and re-introduced networked programming outside of breakfast. In September 2019, Quidem announced it had entered a brand licensing agreement with Global, citing financial losses. Two months later, following permission from regulator,

Ofcom The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...

to change the station's format, it was confirmed Banbury Sound would merge with its Quidem-owned sister stations and launch as

Capital Mid-Counties Capital Mid-Counties is a regional radio station owned by and operated by Global as part of the Capital network. It broadcasts to Coventry, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, south Staffordshire, the Cotswolds and north Oxfordshire. The station la ...

on 2 December 2019.Global confirms Capital FM to replace Quidem stations
Radio Today, 27 November 2019 Local output for the Mid-Counties region consists of a three-hour regional Drivetime show on weekdays, alongside localised news bulletins, traffic updates and advertising for North Oxfordshire. Banbury Sound ceased broadcasting at 7pm on Friday 29 November 2019.

References

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External links

Official websiteBanbury Sound's listing on Media UK
Defunct radio stations in the United Kingdom Radio stations in Oxfordshire Radio stations established in 2006 Radio stations disestablished in 2019 Companies based in Banbury Banbury