The Breeze Basingstoke & North Hampshire was an independent local radio station serving Basingstoke and the surrounding area of North

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

. Owned and operated by Bauer as part of the

Greatest Hits Radio Greatest Hits Radio is a classic hits radio network in the United Kingdom, owned and operated by Bauer. Overview The network launched on 5 January 2015 as the "Bauer City 2 Network", and rebranded on 7 January 2019 due to the success of Rad ...

Network.

History

Kestrel FM

The Basingstoke station launched on 18 May 1998, and is now owned by Celador. The previous owners Milestone launched a free weekly local

newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, 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 p ...

, the

Basingstoke Observer The ''Basingstoke, Thatcham & Newbury Observer'' was a group of local free newspapers for the Basingstoke and surrounding areas of north Hampshire, and the towns of Thatcham and Newbury in Berkshire, England. It was published weekly, and was ava ...

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

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